


Captive Prince Tumblr Ficlets

by caravanslost



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-05-18 22:10:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 35,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14861213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caravanslost/pseuds/caravanslost
Summary: A series of (mostly) unrelated ficlets, celebrating 10 years since the release of Captive Prince, cross-posted from my Tumblr.Including (so far): Strangers-at-a-bar AU; Post-canon fic; Nik and Laurent being friends; shameless domestic fluff; Rule 63; Teachers AU; Priesthood AU; Canon divergence. Pre-canon; Political AU; PWP.





	1. Identity

**Author's Note:**

> Strangers at a bar AU.

Laurent should have left ten minutes ago.

On the bar in front of him sits a glass of very expensive scotch. It's near-drained, though he can still feel its sharp bite on the back of his tongue. Laurent isn't quite drunk, but finds that his more rational thoughts are dissolving before they manage to surface fully.

The bar is a riot. Other patrons jostle his elbows to order their drinks, and behind him, the crowd is too densely packed. A three-person cover band is committing high treason against  _Living On A Prayer_ , and behind the band is an amateur light show, commandeered by an adolescent at a laptop next to the stage, that is somehow worse than the darkness it's disrupting.

Laurent should have left ten minutes ago.

And he would have, but for the figure on the other side of the bar stealing glances at him.

Laurent had absently registered the first glance, and paid it little mind. The second one caught his eye. He noticed that it lingered, and when he met it dead-on, the figure didn’t immediately look away. Laurent had been the recipient of enough glances in one lifetime to recognize the difference between appreciation and interest, but this glance was neither. It was desire, undiluted.

Laurent has a particular response to this kind of attention, when it comes so early on. It is a particular stare, well-practiced and glacial, that marks him out as hostile terrain. It declares to the recipient that whoever he is, he would be found wanting.

But Laurent doesn't find himself inclined to use it in this case.

The figure on the other side of the bar towers over it, the centre of his group of friends, who are enough in number to take up most of their side. Jet black hair curls at his temple, loose and low over his forehead, and probably, Laurent muses, at the nape of his neck. The rest of his face is a pleasing arrangement of strong lines covered with early evening stubble. Laurent also notes that his black t-shirt is a size too small. It sits on his skin like a shadow.

Whoever he is, he isn't particularly good at multi-tasking. His friends catch his eye, speak in his ear, and Laurent watches as the figure visibly forces himself to focus on the conversation.  He watches the reprogramming of his easy smile; the look of intent on his face, as though he could will his attention into holding; the way he leans forward and offers a word or two back.

But a cycle had developed, and Laurent finds that he enjoys watching it take its course. The stranger would flick his gaze back to Laurent, and a few moments later, he would do it again, his looks growing increasingly reckless with each attempt.

Laurent feels heady with the attention, and it courses through him like soft voltage under his skin. It makes him feel like the only person in the room. He finds his own gaze lingering, courting the attention, even though he hasn't yet figured out what he wants to  _do_  with it.

Laurent brings the scotch to his lips and briefly, untethers his imagination.

He imagines an empty bar, and silence, and kissing the red wine off those fulsome lips. Or a door, with Laurent’s back pressed against it, his body pinned warm in the slip of space between it and the stranger. A hand at his neck, stubble against his skin, lips pressing a line of feathery kisses down his jaw.

Perhaps Laurent’s had too much to drink. Perhaps Laurent doesn’t care.

By now, the stranger has lost interest in another friend, who has raised his hands in exasperated defeat and retreated. Laurent raises an eyebrow, and the stranger smiles back without a hint of shame. He drains his glass. The space between them sparks to life suddenly, a distance to be closed.

Laurent gestures to catch the barman’s attention. When he comes, he leans close and tells the barman to buy that man in the t-shirt, the one the other side of the bar, no—not the one with the tattoo, yes—the tall one next to him, a glass of whatever he’ll have.

He watches as the barman crosses the floor, passing a string of other patrons vying for his attention, and delivers the message. The stranger immediately looks to Laurent with something bordering on delight. A moment later, his glass of red wine has been replenished.

The stranger raises his glass in Laurent’s direction, toasting him. Laurent smiles, and this time, it’s an invitation.

That does the trick. The man begins to wade through his friends, and Laurent watches him make his way through the crowd.

His pulse, suddenly, feels louder than the music.


	2. Hello, Lover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A series of (mostly) unrelated ficlets, celebrating 10 years since the release of Captive Prince.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strangers at a bar AU Part 2. 
> 
> [Part 1 is in Chapter 1.]

Laurent knocks on the door to Auguste’s new flat, but the music bleeds out through the walls and into the corridor at an obnoxious volume. No one, he thinks, needs to hear  _Dancing In The Dark_ that loud.

More importantly, no can hear him knock. He looks for a doorbell and does not find one. He knocks again, with the back of his knuckles, hard enough to leave his skin smarting. Still, nothing. 

This time, Laurent waits until the track changes. In the blessed flake of silence between  _Dancing In The Dark_  and  _Blue Monday_ , he knocks a third time.

It opens, unleashing with it an unholy waft of weed from the other side, and also his brother. Auguste’s cheeks are moderately pinked, and he pulls Laurent into a smother of a hug. Those two things tell Laurent all he needs to know about his brother’s sobriety.

Auguste eventually lets go, but stands back and holds him firmly by the shoulders, appraising him like a preening aunt who hasn’t seen him in months.

Laurent raises an eyebrow: he was here less than a week ago. He had helped Auguste move the boxes from his old place, and then helped him unpack them, and then watched as Auguste arranged everything in the flat the  _wrong_   _way_.

“Finally.” Auguste grins. “You’re here.”

“You’re drunk.”

“And you’re  _late_.”

He pulls Laurent in by an arm, and over the music, says, “Come. I’ll introduce you to him.”

Laurent surveys the party as Auguste pulls him through it, past the lounge and dining room and into the kitchen. He recognizes some of the faces—a smattering of Auguste’s friends from university, others from his firm—but they are all too busy dancing or talking to notice Laurent.

On the other hand, the kitchen is occupied by a single figure, standing at the island in the middle and slicing wedges from a bowl of limes. His head is bowed in concentration. Next to him are two bottles of tequila and, somewhat ambitiously, a kilogram packet of salt.

It takes a split second – the briefest fracture of time – for Laurent to realize that he has seen this face before. He has seen it across from him, in a bar; next to him, in a taxi; and over him, in bed.

“Damen.” Auguste says. “He’s here.”

The stranger –  _Damen_ , Laurent corrects himself, as his heart skips a beat – looks up at Auguste, and then to Laurent. Recognition flashes over his face before he can stop it. A moment arrives between the two of them, and settles, and does not pass.

Neither of them says a word. They stare each other down.

Auguste, happily, is a drink or two past noticing or caring.

“This is my brother, Laurent.” he says to Damen, and then, to Laurent, “This is my flatmate, Damen. The one I told you about. He moved in yesterday.”

Laurent makes an immediate decision to spare his brother the context, and hopes that Damen is quick enough to catch on.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he says, formally, “Damen.”

Damen blinks at him.

“You look—” he says, and stops. He looks to Auguste as though for help, and doesn’t find it. When he turns his attention back to Laurent, his expression is guarded. “Have we met?”

“If we had,” Laurent says coolly, “I’m sure I would remember.”

“No.” Damen says, slowly. “You have a very distinctive face. I’m sure I’ve seen you. Maybe at a bar somewhere.”

Auguste, still pleasantly unaware of the undertow, makes a sceptical sound at Damen’s suggestion.

“Laurent doesn’t do  _bars_.” Auguste says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Laurent is suddenly and immensely grateful for his brother, and his tipsiness. The corner of Laurent’s smile smudges with mockery.

“You heard him. I don’t do  _bars_.”

Damen answers with a look that suggests Laurent’s repertoire very much extends to _doing bars_ , as well as a whole lot more. He says nothing, but somehow pulls warmth into Laurent’s cheeks anyway.

Damen says, “So your name is—Laurent?”

He says it carefully, like the word is made of glass and might break. Laurent thinks back to the way Damen cupped his face in his hands when he kissed him. It feels the same, somehow.

“Yes. Anyway,” Auguste interrupts. “You two can talk later. Laurent, come.” He says, reaching for his brother’s arm again. “I have to introduce you to Henry. He’s been reading a book about wrongful convictions and wants to ask you about the Appeals Circuit.”

Laurent gives his brother a reproachful look. “We talked about not volunteering me for show and tell.”

“Too late. Come on.” Auguste says, pulling on his sleeve. “He’s been here since five and won’t shut up.”

Laurent manages to steal one final look at Damen before he’s ushered back out into the swarm, and to the lounge. It’s not enough time for him to decipher Damen’s layered expression.

Auguste is speaking as he leads him from room to room, perhaps to tell him about Henry, but even his booming voice can’t compete with the music.

Laurent does not want to talk to Henry. Henry is handsome, and knows it, and clever, and knows it too. But worst of all—he is dull, and completely oblivious to the fact. Henry believes that reading a few books and devouring Serial is the functional equivalent of a law degree. Auguste cheerfully delivers Laurent to his side and disappears

Henry talks, but Laurent’s mind is elsewhere. He thinks,  _his name is Damen_.

Laurent folds that morsel of knowledge into the corners of each relevant memory. The stranger who pulled him outside the bar and kissed him in the street was a Damen. The one who hailed a taxi for them both, and who began petting him so heavily in the back seat that the driver  _blushed_ , was a Damen.

The name sits at the edge of Laurent’s lips. He suddenly wants Damen to make him  _say it._

Laurent properly turns his attention to Henry for the first time that night. He says, “Please excuse me”, and leaves without another word. He’ll apologize to Auguste later and offer to take Henry out for brunch. For now, he has better things to do.

Laurent weaves his way through and around the crowd. Damen is still not in the lounge, nor on the balcony, nor the dining room, nor the study, nor the kitchen.

That leaves the long corridor at the back of the flat, at the end of which are the bedrooms. Auguste’s room is to the right. The door to left must be Damen’s. It’s closed, but a splinter of light shines through the gap at the bottom.

Laurent raises his hand to knock, but something in the last moment makes him reach for the doorknob and let himself in. He closes the door behind him, and leans back against it.

The room bears the hallmarks of recent occupation: the walls are bare, and there are three suitcases to his left, flung open but still full of clothing and belongings. Only the bed is newly and fully and made.

Next to the bed, Damen is halfway through changing t-shirts. Which is to say: he is shirtless.

Laurent drinks in the sight of him. A tightness begins to coil in his belly, a tension with only one direction of release. He musters his will – just – and looks back up at his face.

Damen says, dry as Laurent had been in the kitchen, “Are you  _lost_.”

“Don’t be daft.”

“If you’re looking for the bathroom, this isn’t it.”

“Be quiet.”

Laurent moves from the door to within an inch of Damen. He wants desperately to reach up, to pull him down, to kiss him, to pick up exactly where they left off two nights ago. That night, he had left before Damen woke up – but he  _almost_  hadn’t. He had almost stayed. He had almost asked Damen his name, and to see him again.

“Hello, lover.” Laurent says,

The effect is gratifying. Two words, and desire breaks through into Damen’s expression.

“So you do remember.”

“Of course. You made quite the impression.”

As if to prove his point, Laurent places a hand on the middle of Damen’s bare chest, flat against the bare skin. It’s warm, and he can feel a telling thump against his palm. Damen looks down at Laurent’s hand like it’s a loaded gun. Laurent pushes gently, and Damen sits down on the bed.

“There are fifty people in this flat.” Damen says.

“Yes,” says Laurent. “Aren’t you glad the music’s loud?”


	3. Point of View

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set during Ravenel in Prince's Gambit. Canon-compliant. From Jord's POV.

Jord is left alone, that night. No one dares come close to him.

They had taken Ravenel. The patchwork rabble of the Prince’s Guard had been given its first sip of victory, and like adolescents, they had inebriated themselves with it.

All around him, there is mirth. Mirth, and wine from the cellars, and frolic in the open. The air is heavy with the scent of spiced meats and spilled drink, and the sound of a lush melody comes from somewhere, plucked on a cithren.

And why shouldn’t they celebrate? The Prince’s Guard had been birthed and raised with the Regent’s blade at its throat. They had barely dared to breathe, but now they had taken Ravenel. Laurent had won a victory against his uncle, and bared to Vere a fraction of the cunning that his guard had watched him cultivate in silence, for years.

Jord stands amongst the festivities like an effigy, in the same room but watching as though from afar. The spectacle around him unfolds in slow motion, faces blurring and their cacophony muted. People move past him and around him, but no one dares look him in the eye. No one ventures a word, kind or otherwise. He cannot decide if he is grateful.

A bottle of wine sits unopened on a table, two steps away. He takes it and removes himself from the room. He finds himself walking through one unfamiliar hallway after another, the full bottle heavy in his hand. It does not take long before he is lost.

Something causes him to stop at a balcony, open to the brisk evening air. Below him is the skeleton activity of a fortress at night. Firelight flickers quietly from disparate spots, interrupted every so often by the sound of wheels on gravel or shouted conversations. The words are indecipherable from this distance.

He unstops the bottle, and begins to drink.

The vintage is sweet, heavy with the taste of plum. Between generous drags of it, Jord’s mind retraces every step that has taken them from Arles to Ravenel. Govart’s dismissal. The Prince tossing the Captain’s badge into his unsuspecting hands, as though on a whim. Aimeric offering his respect, and then his affections, and then himself. The Akielon— _the prince-killer_ —rarely more than three steps away from his unsuspecting master.

Jord takes all of those things into his hands, turns them upside down, and re-examines them with the benefit of all the new and terrible knowledge he has learned tonight. It seems to rewrite reality.

For the moment, he can do no more than feel out the edges of his grief and map its size. It is almost unbearable.

But he must bear it. He alone has authored it.

Jord reflects bitterly that his mistake was in taking things that did not belong to him – a rank, a higher station, the affection of a youth as beautiful as a dream. He erred in wanting, and in letting himself  _have_  when he should have known better. 

And the universe had not tricked him. It had not treated him cruelly. It had only given him the misery he was owed, delivered with a delay. The fault was his, for turning his eyes on more.

Aimeric still feels too close to be a memory. He is still too real, too much flesh and blood. If Jord closes his eyes—and he shouldn’t, but he does—he can feel the phantom of Aimeric’s hand on his face, the silk of his hair curled around his fingers, the breath of his soft laughter against his ear. It had been a melodious sound, that laugh, from lips he could have spent the rest of his life kissing.

Jord brings the wine to his lips again, and downs enough to splutter on it. He wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve, a motion as artless as he feels.

He forces himself to push thoughts of Aimeric aside, and takes his grief as a fixed point. He begins drawing a line from it, backwards in time, back through Arles, to Marlas, to Auguste, slain on the battlefield. To the man who stood over his body, and who now stands falsely at his brother’s side.

Every breath that Damianos has taken in their company is a betrayal: every kilometre he has ridden as part of their campaign; every night he has spent in the Prince’s tent; every drink he has shared around a fire; every strategy he has offered, and every one of which they have acted on, is a betrayal.

Jord puts the bottle at his feet. Perhaps the Prince would never forgive him for Aimeric. If he must live with that, he would.

But—if something happens to the Prince at the hands of Damianos, while Jord sits idly with the truth in his hands, he would never forgive himself.

He abandons the wine, and goes to find his Prince, to bring him the truth.


	4. Loyalty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon fic. Nikandros and Laurent learn how to be around each other.

Nikandros had been training with members of the Veretian guard when the young page interrupted him.

Damen had ordered him to the garrison that morning, where seven young men were waiting for him. They stood in a perfect line, their backs rigid with a canny imitation of confidence. They could not have been older than 13.

They were recent recruits, hand-picked by Laurent himself, who had demonstrated enough raw skill with a weapon to be plucked from the horde. They were to receive the privilege of a few hours of training from the Kyros of Ios. Nikandros walked up and down the line a few times, pausing before each recruit for a few moments at uncomfortably close quarters, just to see whether any of them would flinch.

None did. He was forced to admit, begrudgingly, that Laurent had picked a good bunch.

Nikandros went to the farthest wall and selected two swords. He returned to the group, and stood in front of the boy on the far left.

“You, boy. What’s your name?”

“Éduin, Excellency.” He says, his tongue heavy around the last word, delivered in clumsy Akielon.

He was the smallest of the bunch, but his approximation of confidence was the most convincing. Nikandros had trained enough soldiers in his short lifetime to read the unassailable ambition that burned in the rare recruit. He could read it in this boy’s steady gaze ahead, the taut muscles of his neck, and the stillness of his body like marble.

“Éduin.” Nikandros says, and offers him the second of the two swords. “Step forward. Let me see what you can do.”

It takes three strikes for Nikandros to disarm him. Éduin immediately picks up the sword off the ground and resumes his position, the steel in his eyes intractable. The laughter of the other boys peals around them, and Nikandros gives them a look. Silence falls like a curtain on the garrison.

He turns his attention back to Éduin. “You can do better. Try again.”

The next time, it takes a little longer to disarm the boy, and the time after that, a little longer still. He puts him through enough motions to tire a more experienced soldier, but Éduin does not show his exhaustion. He manages to hold onto his sword for almost a minute by the time Nikandros is done with him. Impressed, Nikandros allows him a break and turns his attention to terrorising someone else – Tristan, who had been the first to laugh.

The training falls into a pleasing rhythm of fighting, disarming, and barking instructions about posture and technique. Nikandros has missed the simple pleasure of being outdoors, and fighting. A Kyros spends too much time inside.

The revelry is interrupted several hours later by another young boy. He arrives dressed in the brilliant blue of Laurent’s Pages, a golden starburst emblazoned on the centre of his chest. The boy wears more fabric on one sleeve than Nikandros does on his whole body.

He falls into a deep bow. “Your excellency,” he says. “His Majesty the King has sent for you.”

“Thank you. There are two of them.” He says, and a corner of his mouth quirks when colour flares into the boy’s cheeks. “Which one?”

“King Laurent, Excellency.”

_Strange_ , he thinks. Nikandros signals for one of the servants in the wings of the garrison, who rushes over and relieves him of the sword, offering a damp washcloth in its place. He wipes the sweat off his brow, his throat, the back of his neck.

All the while, his mind sits uneasy. He feels as though he has been summonsed by a parent - and that perhaps, he is in trouble. 

“Did his Majesty specify what he needed?”

“Your humble servant did not ask, Excellency. I beg your forgiveness.”

In hindsight, it had been a stupid question.

“Never mind.” He says. “Thank you. Lead the way.”

* * *

The Akielon delegation had been in Arles for eight days. His ability to navigate the palace had not improved in that time. There seemed to be three ways from any one point to another, and he found himself walking familiar routes only to end up in corridors he did not recognise. Everything in Vere, it seemed, was duplicitous. Nikandros yearned for Ios.

The young page that had fetched him walked a few steps ahead. Nikandros allowed himself to be led through one grand hallway after another, past galleries and colonnades and atria. No two spaces looked alike. The shock of colour in each space, the tessellated tile-work and the multi-foil arches in the ceiling, made his head hurt.

They stop in one of the many courtyards branching off the palace. Laurent is gazing out at the gardens, hands leaning on the white balustrades, his back straight enough to measure by. He is wearing a circlet instead of his crown, but his hair catches the sunlight so brightly that there is little need for gold.

When he hears the approach of their footsteps, he turns. His expression is characteristically unreadable, and Nikandros knows better than to try and decipher it.

He immediately takes a knee before the King and bows his head. He realizes suddenly that this is his first time alone in Laurent’s company since the Akielon delegation arrived in Vere. He still cannot banish the suspicion that he is in trouble, and wonders mildly how Damen sleeps at night.

“Exal—forgive me. Your Majesty.”

“Rise, Nikandros.” Laurent says, and when Nikandros looks up, he is met with a brief smile. Laurent turns his attention to the page. “Thank you, Henri. You may leave us.”

The page gives a deep bow, and disappears back into the palace.

Laurent turns his attention back to Nikandros. His gaze is sharp, but the hostility of their first few meetings is long gone. A slow and hesitant trust has developed between them, under the mollifying influence of Damen’s company. They had not progressed further than formal civility, but that was good enough.

Laurent says, “I have been negotiating tariffs and importation quotas for grain all morning. My temple feels fit to burst. Will you walk with me?”

Nikandros bows again. “If it pleases your Majesty.”

“You may dispense with some of the formalities, Nikandros.”

Nikandros looks up, and measures a softer look on Laurent’s face. The effect it has at close range is startling.

Choosing his words carefully, he says, “I would hate to overstep the mark.”

Laurent smiles properly, and begins walking. Nikandros falls into step next to him. He leads them down a wide path, flanked by two large rectangular pools, leading out to the first parterre.

“If you overstep the mark, I would spare you.” Laurent says, and then, with a suppressed smile, adds, “But only for Damen’s sake.”

“I think he would forgive you anything. Even my homicide.”

“Intriguing theory.” Laurent says, “But I don’t intend to test it today. Tell me news of Ios.”

This, at least, is more familiar territory. They wind through greener pastures, walls of shrubbery tamed into latticework. Nikandros speaks to him of the justice reforms he has planned, and asks him about the Veretian practice of specialist courts.

Laurent is a natural scholar, and an attentive listener in matters of state—more so than Damen, if Nikandros is an honest man. Laurent solves problems reflexively. He proposes that Nikandros should send Akielon envoys to observe the Courts in Vere, and that when reforms are ultimately implemented, Veretian delegates can be made available to assist. He even rattles off three or four names that immediately spring to his mind, and offers to summon them to the Palace the following day.

For a supposed break, Laurent has achieved a lot, but he seems energised by the conversation. They walk in silence for a while thereafter.

Eventually, Laurent says, “You were wasted on Delpha. Ios is lucky to have you.”

Nikandros does not respond immediately.

But eventually: “I know it was your idea, to barter Ios for my loyalty. Perhaps I should thank you.”

“No. You shouldn’t. It was a means to an end at the time.” Laurent says. “But I have never regretted it, and you have risen to the challenge admirably. Damen is very lucky to count you in his service.”

“Your Majesty.”

“I understand that your first loyalty will always lie with him, as it rightfully should,” Laurent says, and then he stops, and looks very seriously at Nikandros. “But you must feel free to correspond with me. I care to know about Ios. I want to help you, how I can. If you will let me.”

They have reached the topiary, and they are alone. Laurent watches him with an intensity befitting his offer. Nikandros thinks to himself that it feels overwhelming, to be trusted by this man.

“I’m grateful, Laurent.”

The acceptance of the offer – and strangely, even the familiarity with which Nikandros has addressed him – seems to please Laurent.

“Good. You will find,” Laurent says, eyes dancing once more, “that Damen chose me for more than my blonde hair and blue eyes.”

Nikandros flushes to the heavens.

“Gods, is there  _anything_  he doesn’t tell you?”


	5. Forgiveness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon fic. Heavy conversations and hand-holding.

In the end, Kastor is buried next to their father.

The mausoleum is a dazzling space, a single circular atrium in which the royal family are laid to eternal rest. Its walls are made of the whitest marble, and its domed ceiling rises to the heavens. Depending on the hour, so much light reflects around the room that the effect on the beholder is almost blinding.

Beneath the dome, in the centre of the space, is a round altar, also in marble. The royal tombs emanate outwards from it like rays from the sun. The surface of each tomb bears the effigy of its resident, in full regalia of state, their arms crossed over the chests. The instruments of their lifetimes – sceptres, or swords, or both - are carved into their hands, and their eyes are shut in peace.

One day, Damen will be buried here as well.

When Theomedes was still alive, when things were simpler, Damen came here to pay his respects weekly, but only because it pleased his father. Theomedes believed that a King was well served by regular reminders of his own mortality.

But Damen always attended to the task with a heavy heart. The mausoleum housed ancestors he had never met, and a mother he had never known. Now, it held a brother who seemed more of a stranger to him than anyone else buried here, and a father he was still grieving.

It had been a week since Kastor was buried. Damen was here to pay his respects, and the task had never seemed heavier.

There were murmurs when Damen decided that Kastor would rest next to their father. Even as Ios brimmed with movement as he established his rule, the voices found time to whisper that Kastor, the bastard, had forfeit his already tenuous place in the royal family. Nikandros was less subtle in making the same suggestion, but Damen would not be swayed.

Only Laurent declined to interfere in the matter, even when Damen asked for his counsel.

In the end, Kastor was buried without funeral rites. Damen did not declare a week of mourning in his memory, and denied him a procession through the streets of Ios. The flames in the temple were not extinguished, no dirges were chanted, and no offerings were made in his memory. When he was shut into his tomb, only Damen and Laurent had been there to serve as witnesses.

This morning, Damen had already knelt at the foot of each tomb, offering the dead their rightful prayers. When finished, he finds himself standing in the space between his father and Kastor. Something possesses him to sit, so he does, his back against his father’s tomb, his eyes on his brother’s. The marble floor is ice through the thin cotton of his chiton.

He loses count of how many hours he stays there. The shadows in the room, which had fallen to the left when he arrived, now fall to the right.

Only later – much later – is he interrupted by the sound of boots walking up the steps into the mausoleum. He recognizes Laurent’s footsteps before he comes into view.

Laurent stops at the entry. He would not be able to see Damen, on the floor.

“I’m here.” Damen says.

Laurent follows the sound and finds him. When he comes into view, his blonde hair is easily the boldest colour in the room. He stops at the foot of Theomedes’ tomb, his hand lightly resting on its corner. His brow is pinched with a concern that Damen has not seen since he was bedridden. A lengthy moment passes, in which he seems to measure his words.

“I don’t like to see you on the floor.” Laurent says, eventually.

“There’s nowhere else to sit,” Damen says.

Laurent casts a brief eye over the room.

“We’ll have to do something about that.” And then, expression softening, adds. “I can leave you, if you’d prefer to be alone.”

But even as he extends the offer, it’s clear that the idea finds no favour with him.

In a week, Laurent would begin the journey back to Vere, this time by sea, to begin preparing for his ascension. Three months of enforced distance would follow before Damen made the same journey himself. There would be a time and a place for separation. It did not have to be now.

The familiar longing that rises in Damen’s chest whenever Laurent is near begins to bloom. He extends a hand towards Laurent and says, “No. Stay.”

Laurent moves towards him and accepts his hand, joining him on the floor. Damen entwines the fingers of their clasped hands, and Laurent takes them into his lap. His thumb runs circles over Damen’s skin.

Eventually, Laurent says, “I know you want to forgive him. You shouldn’t. He barely deserves to be mourned by you.”

“I don’t mourn for what he did.” Damen says. “I mourn for who he was.”

“You mean, who you thought he was.”

“He was my brother.”

“No. Not while he could have been an heir. Thrones corrupt. Even the promise of them.”

Damen turns to him.

“If Auguste had lived to sit on his throne, you would have been first to bend your knee. He would have counted you first amongst his servants. You would have died loyal to him.”

“Yes. I would have.” Laurent says. His tone is even but his eyes shine, crystalline. “And when fate saw that I would, look at the hand it dealt him and I.”

Damen exhales, and leans his head back against the cool marble. They share a silence for a while.

“What of us, then? And our two thrones? Will fate doom us too?”

“It has certainly tried.” Laurent says. There is a pregnant pause before he adds, “I worry, sometimes, that it is not yet done with us.”

For a moment, Damen thinks of all the strange things they share. Dead mothers, dead fathers, dead brothers. Kingdoms wrenched from them by hands that should have served them. Deceit and betrayal, woven in webs around them with threads so fine that neither realized they had been spun – until they tried to move, and found themselves trapped.

“What more is there for fate to do?” Damen asks. “What more could it take from us?”

“Each other.” Laurent says, flat.

He turns his face away from Damen and looks at a point on the floor near his feet. His breathing shallows.

Damen raises their clasped hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to Laurent’s knuckle, and brings them down to his own lap. Laurent closes his eyes and does not open them until his equilibrium is restored. It takes longer than usual.

When he begins again, he says, “Sometimes, I can feel the weight of it all like water in my lungs. Like a foot on my chest, with my back to the floor.”

“I know.” Damen says. “So do I.”

“And you would still forgive him, after all he has done to you?”

“I would. My brother is dead, but we live.” Damen says. “And there is too much other pain to carry.”


	6. Power

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU; power-cut AU (which I have decreed is A Thing); shameless domestic fluff (laid on with a trowel, you’ve been warned). 
> 
> Laurent is an overworked junior doctor, and Damen is his adoring and devoted husband. Cotton candy in fic form.

It’s a Thursday night, 9pm. For the first time in an age, Laurent is home from the hospital before midnight.

He and Damen should have had dinner together three nights ago. On each of those three nights, at the very moment that Laurent thought about going home, an emergency had materialized. On each of those three nights, Laurent called home, and apologized, and postponed.

Damen hadn’t complained or berated him. Damen never did. In the face of Laurent’s endless shifts, Damen was a study in forgiveness. Each night, he packed Laurent’s dinner and dropped it off for him at the paediatric ward reception, along with a plate of fresh baking for the nurses. Each night, between mouthfuls of brownie or cinnamon scroll, the nurses told Laurent that he was the luckiest junior doctor in the country. He was inclined to agree.

Orlant had asked him to stay late tonight as well. Laurent had shoved the pager in his senior registrar’s chest and said,  _Ask me again. I dare you_. Orlant didn’t dare. By the time Laurent and Damen finally sit down to eat, the food—or what’s left of it—is three days old.

Still, eating dinner at the same table is rare enough to be a treat in its own right. Damen clearly feels the same, and serves him dinner by candlelight to mark the occasion. In the low light, Laurent comes to aching terms with how much he misses the simple pleasure of sitting across from him. Damen piles food onto both their plates and refills their wine glasses liberally, his body animating whatever story he tells. Laurent listens gladly because most of the time, Damen’s voice comes to him down the other end of a line.

Even as leftovers, dinner is a feast—seared duck breast with blood orange and star anise; salads to spare; and Eton Mess for dessert. Laurent, who usually subsists off the dry rot that passes for cafeteria sandwich meat, could have wept.

After they finish eating, and before Laurent retires to study for his upcoming exam, Damen pours him a generous snifter of port. Laurent protests with neither the force nor the conviction to actually stop him. Damen presses the cool glass into his hand, and it takes all of two sips for Laurent’s blood to cable the alcohol right to his head.

Damen places a hand on the back of Laurent’s neck, fingers pushing into his skin in long, gentle motions. Mid-knead, he leans down and presses a chaste kiss to Laurent’s crown. Laurent sighs with artless pleasure.

He hasn’t felt this good in  _weeks_.

“You work yourself too hard.” Damen says, lips still in his hair.

“I know.”

“If you don’t draw the line somewhere, I’m going to draw it for you.”

Laurent closes his eyes, and wills himself to focus on each place where Damen touches him.

“I wish I could let you.”

Damen cups his jaw and kisses his cheek, and then leaves him for the dishes. Laurent watches him go, and wonders how it’s possible to miss someone who’s still in the same room.

Laurent keeps a silent count of all the marriages that falter around him at work. Some nights, he worries that he’ll come home to an empty bed, and add his own relationship to the tally. But for whatever reason, Damen stays. He is still in their bed when Laurent comes home each night, even when Laurent is too tired to do anything more than mumble a few words and fall into his arms, still in scrubs. Damen gives and gives.

In his exhaustion, Laurent accepts it gratefully, and adds another entry to the ledger of emotional debt that he owes. Sometimes, he thinks the guilt and the gratitude will break him, like now. He lulls himself with the port.

Eventually, Laurent convinces his limbs from the dining table to his desk. He moves with all the relish of a man walking towards the gallows. When he sits down, he notices the steaming mug of milky tea that Damen has left waiting for him.

Damen is already back in the kitchen, elbow deep in yellow gloves and crockery. As ever, he attends to the dishes with more suds than either appropriate or necessary for the task. A pang of fondness bursts helplessly in Laurent’s chest.

He takes a sip of the sweet tea, opens his textbook, and uncaps his pens and highlighters. He makes it through all of two and a half sentences before the electricity suddenly dies, plunging the whole flat into darkness.

Nothing happens for a few moments. Into the black, Laurent offers a single, heartfelt, “ _Fuck_.”

From the kitchen, Damen says, “Stay where you are. Don’t move.”

Laurent can’t see Damen, but hears him taking off his gloves. There is a scrambling on the countertop as he searches for his phone, and finds it, and uses it for light. Damen walks over to the window, parting the curtain just enough to look outside.

“Jesus. The entire area’s dark.” He says. His face is barely more than a silhouette. “Even the streetlights are out. I can’t see a thing.”

Laurent sinks into his seat. He thinks of how behind he already is, and presses fingers to the dull ache that gathers at his temple.

“I need to get through two chapters tonight.” He says.

“Want me to light you a candle?”

“I love you, but if you light that crime of lime and parsley for my sake, I  _will_  divorce you.”

“Lime and  _basil_ , you philistine.” Damen says, and Laurent can hear the smile in his voice, even if he can’t see it. “If you can’t study, you’ll have to take the night off.”

He might as well have suggested an armed insurrection, or a two-man invasion of France.

“Do you know how long it’s been since I had a night off?”

“Nine weeks, to the day,” Damen says, without skipping a beat. “By all means, strengthen my case.”

“I don’t think I even remember  _how_  to have a night off.”

He hears Damen move away from the window and move closer, till the warmth of Damen’s body is immediately behind his chair. Hands land on Laurent’s shoulders, Damen’s thumbs instinctively seeking out the focal points of tension at the bottom of his neck. When he finds them, he presses, and hard. The sudden pressure kicks Laurent so deeply off his axis that he almost slips off the chair.

Damen’s hands begin kneading expertly into his skin. Laurent lets hm. Eventually, the sharp tension in his muscles begins to unlock, and then it turns to liquid. Damen’s hands are like a fireplace against his skin, and Laurent arches back into their heat.

“How about,” Damen says, his tone low, intention clear, “I remind you what we do on  _nights off_.”

Laurent’s blood accelerates. He smiles into the darkness.

“You might have to do all the work.”

Damen leans down, closer, and Laurent can feel the warmth of him from a few inches away. Strong fingers find the edge of his jaw, grip gently, turn his face to Damen’s. Somewhere between the kiss pressed to his cheek, and the next one, pressed to his lips, Laurent feels himself give in.

“Let me.” Damen whispers. “I want to.”


	7. Women

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU; University Debating AU; Genderswapped AU/Rule 63.
> 
> Credit: To @hawberries, for [this inspiring piece of art](http://hawberries.tumblr.com/post/171954860342) that I’ve come back to for weeks; and to @lambergeier, for naming Damia and Laurence, and also [this fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12687816), which destroyed me.

The hotel room had been dirt cheap—the cheapest they could find in Vancouver—and they got exactly what they paid for.

Damia and Laurence had arrived a week ago. The owner—a balding man in his late 40s, the kind who wore a Hawaiian shirt in the middle of winter—had shown them as far as the door and then fled, as though he knew better than to wait for their reactions to the room.

The two single beds were small, their mattresses loose and drooping, the bedspreads an unsightly shade of mustard. Under their feet, the carpet was an abrasive weave that, to Laurence’s horror, extended into the bathroom. Within a moment of stepping into the room, they both resolved to spend as little time inside it as possible.

Happily, they did well enough at Worlds to honour that resolution. They easily broke through the nine preliminary rounds and the octo-finals, but it was no less than they expected of themselves. The quarter-final was a rout, but the semi-final had turned on a knife-edge and two points in their favour.

They had made it to the final. They didn’t dare celebrate.

But the night they won the semi, Laurence, Damia and Nik took the seabus to Lonsdale Quay. The evening was cold but they felt electric. They bought takeout and sat on the pier, watching the lights on the skyline. Laurence sat between the other two and daydreamed of how good the words “World Champion” would look on her CV.

That was last night. Damia and Laurence had gotten into their beds at 10, talked in the dark till midnight, and woken up at 7 to receive the motion. It was released to both teams at 8.  _This house would not allow out of court settlements for workplace discrimination and harassment._  They had worked all day.

Now, it was half past eleven at night. Laurence should have been in bed an hour and three articles ago.

Instead, she sits cross-legged on her bed, headphones in her ear, Brahms at full volume. All three speeches are in front of her, arranged in a meticulous line. These are third drafts. To her left is her laptop, its fan wheezing against the comforter; and to her right are the five most recent articles on employment discrimination from the  _Harvard Women’s Law Journal_.

Laurence re-reads Nik’s speech, mechanically uncapping and recapping her red pen as she edits. She only interrupts the rhythm to cross things out.

Her vision is tunnelled: she does not notice Damia throw off her covers and come over. Damia swipes all three speeches from in front of her and Laurence startles, popping out her headphones to object.

“Damia, I’m not done.”

“You’re never done.” Damia says. “I’m confiscating the speeches.”

In protest, Laurence says: “ _Damia_.”

In perfect mimicry, Damia replies: “ _Laurence_.”

They reach an impasse, and share a wary look. They had run through infinite variations of this same argument before, in other hotel rooms, in other cities, during other debating tournaments. Left to her devices, Laurence would happily edit through the night, and arrive at a final with a triple-shot espresso and a death-stare.

Only Damia was bloody-minded enough to stop her. Damia had staged the first such intervention two years ago, in Sydney at Australs. They fought, and Damia won, and Laurence went to sleep at an hour that was almost reasonable. The next morning, they won the tournament. Laurence had insisted on rooming with her since, for that reason.

Amongst—well. Other reasons.

Damia slides the speeches onto the small nightstand between their two beds. By the time she turns back to Laurence, her expression has softened.

“It’s almost midnight. You really need to sleep.”

“I don’t know if I can.” Laurence says. “I keep thinking about losing.”

“So think about winning.”

“But then we  _will_  lose.”

“God, fine. Think about literally  _anything_  else swarming in that hive you call a mind.”

When Laurence doesn’t reply, Damia knows she’s won.

Laurence decides that the mess on her bed isn’t helping. She gathers the journal articles and dumps them on the floor, along with the books, and banishes her laptop to the top of the pile. When she’s done, she gives Damia her best  _are you satisfied_  look. She is rewarded with a smile,

Damia’s in the red flannels she favours the night before a final. Her hair is in a bun, but curls have spilled out to frame her face in soft wisps. She hasn’t realized that her top two buttons have come undone.

But Laurence notices, and her heart goes  _thump_ , and her gaze lingers a little longer than it should.

She knows she’s been caught even before she looks back. Damia’s smile is still there, waiting for her, but now it’s tempered with something else—something that Laurence can’t quite read.

“Will you go to sleep now?” Damia says, softly.

“Give me something else to think about.”

A moment passes where nothing happens, where Laurence’s words remain suspended in the air between them.

She hadn’t planned to speak them. She knows how she feels, and she has a fair idea of how Damia feels, but Laurence had different plans for those words. She had intended to say them differently, more directly, somewhere nicer, when they had the time and energy to do something about them.

But she notices the deep breath that Damia takes, and carefully lets out. She notices her lips part, and the absent way she tucks her curls behind her ear, like she does when she’s nervous.

“We have a final tomorrow.” Says Damia.

“I know.”

Damia sits down on Laurence’s bed, her hands flat on the bedspread. Laurence wonders whether she knows what to do with them. She also thinks, wildly,  _please kiss me._

Damia says, “We could do this now.”

Laurence takes in a shaky breath. Damia raises a hand to Laurence’s face, and tilts it up towards her. Her hand is soft, and warm, and Laurence wants to feel it run over every inch of her skin. Damia restricts herself to Laurence’s bottom lip, sketching a gentle line over it with her thumb.

“But,” Damia continues, “we’re not going to.”

“No?”

“No. But if we win tomorrow, I’m going to kiss you.”

Damia is close. Close enough for Laurence to lean in and do it anyway, and  _god_ , she wants to. She’s thought about it so many times. The space between them is fleeting, and it seems to spark at the promise of being closed.

Damia knows what she’s done. The edges of her smile are smudged with satisfaction. Laurence’s only consolation is the obvious desire, the visible effort Damia is exerting to hold herself back – the same effort that Laurence is using against herself.

“And if we lose?“ Laurence asks.

“Somehow,” Damia says, quiet and irresistible. “I don’t think we will.”


	8. A Kingdom, Or This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set post-canon. The Kings are drunk and very much in love, and find their way to each other in every timeline. NSFW(ish).

They are lying in bed in the middle of the afternoon, for no other reason than because they can. It is too hot to be outside, to hot for clothes, too hot for thinking sensibly. Damen lies on his back with Laurent’s body curled around him, the ivory linen tangled loosely over both their naked bodies.

A bottle of sour cherry wine sits empty on the floor, next to Laurent’s side of the bed. The wine had slowed time down to a delicious pace. They are drunk, and flush with pleasure, and they have nowhere else to be. They would likely be asleep within minutes.

But Damen is prone to saying stupid things in the heat, or after fucking, and stupider things still when both are combined.

“I wonder, sometimes,” he says. “Do you think we would have met, if we’d been born common?”

The thought is strange enough to lift Laurent’s head. He frowns at first—it takes him a few moments to work through it, in his languorous state—but when he finally does, the corner of his mouth betrays an indulgent smile.

Laurent shifts to his side, and props his head up against his hand. The sheets crease loosely around his exposed hips.

“Well.” He says. “ _You_  would have been born in a small village outside of Ios. You grow up a blacksmith, like your father, and his father. You court the beautiful daughter of the local innkeeper for all of five minutes before she’s pregnant. You marry her and she bears you a small litter of children, each of them beautiful, like their mother, and obnoxious, like you. You would die fat, and happy.”

It is a rich tapestry. From its multitude of threads, Damen picks out a single one.

“A  _blacksmith_.” He says, mildly affronted.

“The gods couldn’t keep you away from swords, in this lifetime or the next.” Laurent says, wryly. “Meanwhile, I would have risen above my station, and likely ended up at Court anyway. Perhaps as a lawyer. But our paths would have no cause to cross.”

“Perhaps you could accompany a Veretian delegation to Akielos.”

“And what business would I have, with an Akielon blacksmith?’

“Perhaps your carriage could make its way through my humble village, following the royal procession. Children could chase it. I would emerge from my forge and stand outside to watch.” Damen says, fondly. His eyes are on Laurent, but his mind’s eye is elsewhere. “And you, my lord, would notice me.”

“Do I find soot attractive, in this other lifetime?”

Damen grins. He leans over Laurent till he’s pushed him flat against the sheets, and slides a thigh up between his legs. It usually takes more than that to work him up, but the wine was strong, and its effects lingered. Laurent gazes up at him through low lashes.

“My eyes would find you, and yours would find me,” Damen says, low and promising, “and with a single look, you would know all the things I would do to you.”

Laurent smiles coquettishly.

“I see. Would you bend me over your workbench and take me?” He says.

“I would take you anywhere that Your Grace pleases to be taken,” Damen says, “but no. Your carriage would pass through my village without stopping. You would reach the Palace in Ios and be shown to your rooms. There, you would toss and turn in your bed the whole night, sick for me.”

“You flatter yourself, blacksmith.”

“No. I know you.”

Laurent wraps his arms around Damen’s neck and pulls him in, conceding the point. Damen obliges, and kisses the last taste of wine off his lips. He feels light-headed with joy.

“A single glance across a whole lifetime seems an awful fate,” says Laurent.

Damen smiles, because there is no universe where Laurent of Vere defers to something as notional as  _fate_.

“I didn’t say I was finished.” He says. “You pace the length of your room a hundred times that evening, and decide to come find me. You want to know if you had imagined the look I gave you.”

He presses his palm against Laurent’s lower belly, and begins rubbing slow circles into his warm skin. Laurent arches into the touch like it’s sunlight, and closes his eyes.

“Do I, now.” He says.

“You do,” Damen says. “When you find me, I kneel for you. You ask my name and I tell you that my name is Damianos, your humble servant, at your Grace’s service. Our eyes meet, and you would know. It shakes you.”

Damen’s hand moves lower, to the soft skin on the inside of Laurent’s thigh. His thumb presses a line into the crease between leg and hip, and Laurent is already half-hard. Damen’s knuckles brush against him, and Laurent’s whole body jolts.

His hips fall back against the bed, and Damen pauses long enough for him to recover. When he opens his eyes again, his gaze is fervid.

“I see.” Laurent says, almost breathless. “And  _then_  you take me on your workbench?”

“I’m beginning to think you want me to.”

“Disgusting,” Laurent says, fondly.

“I would not take you on my workbench. You would return to the Palace and discreetly pull aside a page. You would order him to summon Damianos, the blacksmith’s boy.”

“And the seven layers of soot, baked into your skin—what of them?”

“You would have me sent to the baths first. They wash me, and oil me, and deliver me to your bed.” Damen says.

Damen brings his weight down to bear over Laurent, wraps a hand around him. Laurent’s lips part at the touch, and the noise that escapes from between them is soft and needy. Damen tightens his grip and Laurent mindlessly thrusts into his palm.

“And,” Damen says with intent, “since your Grace has taken liberties in summoning me,  _I_ would take my liberties with  _you_.”

“Go on.” Laurent says, in barely more than a whisper.

Damen leans down, brings his lips to Laurent’s ear, and begins stroking downwards, once for every promise that follows.

“I would have you,” he says, “till you forget your name. Till you forget your King’s name. Till you forget where you come from.”


	9. Youth (Without Youth)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-canon Laurent; mentions of death; Laurent-induced sadness.

When Laurent witnesses his first public execution, he is five.

He is seated on his mother’s lap, and there are a thousand people between the royal dais and the hangman’s platform. The silence of the crowd unsettles him, and he sinks further back into his mother’s arms. He see Edmon, Councillor to his father, walk onto the platform. He is followed by a frightening man in a hood. Laurent cannot see his face.

Laurent searches for Auguste because he is scared. Auguste is on the other side of their father, and wears the same serious expression. His eyes are forward, his lips an unmoving line, practising the rites of a throne. He does not notice Laurent.

Edmon kneels for the King. Then he stands, walks beneath the frame on the podium, and stops. His eyes are closed when the frightening man begins to tie a length of rope around his neck. He does not protest when a thick, black hood is placed over his head.

Laurent does not know what will happen next, but he knows to be afraid of it.

His mother leans down and whispers, directly into his ear, “My love, you must be very good for me. You must be very, very quiet.”

* * *

He is nine when he attends his first meeting of the King’s Council. Auguste sits at their father’s right hand again, his presence welcomed, and Laurent sits at his father’s left, his company indulged. He sits silently, absorbing new words about strange topics, and he is too proud and too shy to ask for the explanations he needs. He commits everything to heart and answers his own questions in the library, afterwards, alone.

* * *

He is thirteen when his mother falls ill. Vere’s best physicians can reach no diagnosis and offer no hope. Laurent holds vigil at her bedside for a week before she dies, her hand in his. He can measure the life left in her by the loosening grip of her fingers. She loses her ability to speak first, and to smile next, and the day before she dies, she does not open her eyes.

His father and Auguste mourn as royals should, the sorrow in their faces cast like marble: unmoving, permanent, eternal. He emulates them because he must, even though every aching fibre of grief in his body riles against the act. He weaves his misery so close to his heart that he thinks he will suffocate with the pressure.

He is thirteen, and a prince, and when they bury her, he is not allowed to cry.

* * *

He is still thirteen when fate extends a hand in his direction again, sweeping away the rest of his everything.

Thirteen when they take him to a dead father, and a dead brother, and thirteen when he must accompany their bodies back to Arles. Thirteen, when he learns the meaning of  _family_ , and thirteen, when one man poisons that well forever. Men who never considered him begin to kneel for him, and a burden the size of a nation falls on his shoulders.

Laurent is thirteen, and a child, and anything but.


	10. Parallels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU. Teachers AU. The two-idiots-in-love-who-won't-do-anything-about-it trop.

The fight was large enough, and lasted long enough, that news of it travelled to the staffroom even as it raged on.

Half the teachers ran out in a mad sprint to the basketball courts. Damen immediately lodged himself between Kallias and Ancel and pushed them apart, but the boys would not be easily split. It took the combined efforts of Nikandros and Jord, each pulling one of the boys away, before the fight came to an end.

The aftermath was gruesome. There was red on their clothes and both their fists, and on the concrete beneath their feet. Ancel nursed a split lip and a ripped shirt; Kallias, a bloodied nose. But even with the strength of their teachers bearing down on them, they could barely be kept apart. Both Nikandros and Jord struggled to keep hold of them.

Damen began marshalling the schoolyard. In the thundering voice that he reserved for occasions such as this, he declared that any student still on the courts in a minute would land themselves a week of detention, no negotiations. The teenagers dispersed like sandflies.

He told Nik to take Kallias to Paschal first, because he was bleeding the heaviest, and told Jord to keep Ancel in the staffroom until Kallias was done. Damen would call both sets of parents, and summon them to the school.

The boys were separated with venom in their eyes.

* * *

Laurent, who had taken his sixth form Classics class to a guest lecture at the university, missed the whole thing. He arrives back at the staffroom at half past five to pick up a box of marking. The room should have been empty, save for a cleaner or two.

Instead, he finds Damen, Nik and Jord at one of the tables. The bottle of rum Makedon keeps stashed in the vice-principal’s office has been unearthed, and it sits open between them.

It’s only Tuesday – far too early in the week for the trio to look as dishevelled as they do. But dishevelled they look, wearing a particular weariness familiar to only parents and teachers. It is the weariness of explaining things that should not need to be explained, to teenagers who should know better by now.

Still, Damen smiles at Laurent like he hasn’t seen him in a week. And Laurent’s eyes linger – as they always do – a fraction longer on Damen than anyone else.

Laurent looks from the bottle to the company keeping it. He says, “Has someone been fired?”

“No.” Nik says. He leans back in his chair and stretches his arms behind him, grimacing as his shoulders crack. “But we broke up a fight for the history books.”

Jord adds, “And—if you work out who was involved, we’ll split your supervision duties for the rest of the term.”

The deal is offered without Damen or Nik’s consent, and they pull faces in his direction. Jord ignores them and nods to Laurent. “Go on. Sit down. Guess.”

Laurent pauses, and weighs up whether schoolyard gossip is a more enticing prospect than the quiet night he had planned. At home is a new bottle of rosé from Auguste, a perfect book to match it, and a fireplace waiting to be lit.

On the other hand, he hasn’t seen Damen all day. In fact, he’s barely seen him this week.

Laurent pulls out a chair, scans through the school roll n his mind, and lands on the most likely culprit before he sits down.

“Govart, surely.”

“For once, no.” Says Nik. With the edges of a humourless smile, he adds, “Govart was in the senior common room, sleeping off a suspected hangover. Try again.”

“Fine. Chauvin?”

Damen shakes his head. Appearing to brace them for how long this might take, he finds a fourth glass for Laurent. Jord pours an over-generous measure of rum into it, and Damen slides the glass across the table.

Laurent catches it with both hands. “You could spare the lot of us, and just  _tell_  me. “

The three of them exchange a glance that Laurent can’t decipher. For a fleeting moment, he feels like he’s eight again, the only person in the room who’s never in on the joke. Laurent gets on well enough with each of them, but there is an ease in their combined dynamic that does not come naturally to him. It always throws him a little off balance.

“Ancel started it.” Nik says, and pauses for effect before adding, ”with—wait for it—Kallias.”

A single, golden brow arches up, as though pulled by a string.

“ _Kallias_ ,” says Laurent.

Nik points to a smattering of blood on his shirt as proof. It extends from the side of his wrist to the centre of his forearm, as though smeared there.

“Is Kallias still alive,” Laurent asks, “or did Ancel eat his heart?”

“Would you believe, they were about evenly matched.” Damen says darkly. “But Kallias was angrier. A minute longer, and I think he would have broken Ancel’s nose. Guess what they were fighting about.”

Laurent couldn’t imagine Kallias raising his voice, much less his fists, and drew a similar blank when imagining what might prompt either.

Jord says, “Erasmus”, and Laurent repeats, “ _Erasmus_ ”, and the world makes a little less sense that it did a minute ago.

“Ancel was being suggestive about Erasmus. Awful stuff.” Nik explains. “I won’t repeat it. He’s been suspended a week longer than Kallias for it.” He raises his glass to his lips, and before taking a drink, he says, “God only knows what possessed that little shit to do it.”

“Do we know where Saint Erasmus was, while Kallias defended his honour?”

“Sick. At home. He missed the whole spectacle.” Damen says. He leans back in his chair and folds his arms, looking troubled. “We’ll have to make sure Ancel doesn’t give him an encore of what was said.”

The three of them go quiet, contemplating the possibility. It is firmly within the realms of comprehension. Ancel is a terror, and the pride and joy of the junior debate team. He has a gift for holding a room in his palm, and speaking in technicolor. Erasmus wouldn’t stand a chance.

Eventually, Laurent says, “Well. Maybe something good can come of it. If Kallias is half as clever as I think he is, he’ll reflect on how quickly he jumped to defend Erasmus. Maybe he’ll finally ask Erasmus out?”

Kallias and Erasmus were in the same year. They only had eyes for each other, and not a shred of daring between them. There was an open betting pool amongst the senior students about how long it would take for them to become an item. The pool had started when those same students were juniors. Ancel held more bravado in one corner of his sneer than the two of them did, combined. 

Nik frowns at Laurent, and turns to Jord and Damen. “Am I drunk? Is he looking for silver linings?”

Except—Damen isn’t listening. He leans forward in his seat, shifting the conversation so that it sits more squarely between him and Laurent. Laurent feels his shoulders tense in response, and his hands tighten around the glass of rum. He still hasn’t had a drop of it.

Damen watches Laurent with an intensity that stoppers the breath halfway up his chest. It is a look that betrays a thought on the verge of being spoken, and imminent words that, once spoken, cannot be unsaid. Laurent has seen this look before – he has seen Damen give it, and brace himself by it, and then resile from it.

“I don’t understand,” Damen says, very carefully, “why everyone expects Kallias to make the first move.”

“Because.” Laurent says. “Erasmus barely answers his own name during roll call.”

“And yet, you expect Kallias to know how Erasmus feels?”

After that, the air in the room hangs a little differently. From the corner of his eye, Laurent sees Jord and Nik exchange a charged look. Jord reaches for the rum again, and Nik clears his throat uncomfortably. It takes a considerable effort to shut them out.

“Anyone with eyes,” Laurent says , “and a ten second glimpse of them in the same room, would know exactly how Erasmus feels.”


	11. Unity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Priesthood AU. Damen is a trainee priest with a wandering eye; Laurent is the unsuspecting hot congregant.

Early on, Damen noticed that people arrived late to mass like they arrived late to class – clumsily, noisily, and falling over themselves with embarassment. They would barely kneel at the end of the last pew in the church, cross-themselves in a muddle, and shuffle in with their coats still on. When they approached the altar for communion, they wouldn’t normally look you in the eye.

But the two young men who walked into Our Lady of the Assumption, on a still morning in mid-September, had no such compunctions. They blessed themselves at the font as though they had time to spare, and paused before selecting two conspicuously empty seats, three rows from the front. Father Joseph was halfway through a reading from the book of Exodus, but the attention of half the congregation strayed towards the newcomers.

They looked to Damen like brothers, different iterations of the same elegance. The taller one, sitting closest to the aisle, couldn’t have been older than 30. He was bearded and looked like he belonged at the head of a table, although he listened to Father Joseph with a gentle, attentive expression.

But Damen’s eyes drifted towards the younger man. He listened just as mindfully, but his attention was a sharp line to his brother’s rounded edge. Watching him, Damen had the sense of an early spring morning, of chilled beauty and stilled droplets of dew.

When Damen noticed his mind straying – and more importantly, the worrying direction of its drift – he forced himself to look away.

He was at Mass. He was  _serving_. In a year, he would be expected to  _lead_.

And it worked, until the Eucharist.

The older brother approached first and went to Father Joseph, but the younger one came to the priest’s left, to where Damen was standing. The sharp lines of his face, which called the eye from a distance like a beacon, had an even more startling effect in proximity. He approached with his hands clasped together in front of him, for a blessing rather than for the host.

Damen raised his thumb to the young man’s forehead, but hesitated before touching him, as though something about it wouldn’t be allowed. His skin was soft and warm – almost unbearably so – and Damen had to focus on every single word of the quiet blessing he gave.

_May the Lord’s blessing be with you_. He heard the waver in his own voice, even as he spoke. The young man heard it too, because he looked up.

Whatever expression crossed Damen’s face was caught. For a moment, nothing moved, and Damen saw in those blue eyes traces of the same bewilderment he felt. And then, with a surge of satisfaction, he noticed a crest of red in his cheeks, impossibly bold against the fair skin. The young man cast his eyes down again, and left.

Damen watched him walk away, feeling as though his grip on something had faltered.

A sharp  _thwack_  on the shin from Mrs Tommen’s cane snapped his attention back to service. She had followed the line of his gaze. When he looked back at her sheepishly, she raised her hands for the host but smiled at him like the devil. After her, it took three more congregants before he regained his footing.

He would have to pray about this.


	12. Deceit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU. Prompt was, "does somebody wanna be fake engaged to me for like 2 hours to try free wedding cake samples’.

Damen told Laurent to meet him at the Cakery at 12. Custom dictated that Laurent would arrive at 11.55, amd Damen at 12.10.

Only—this time, Damen is early. His motorbike is parked in a wedge of space directly in front of the shop, between a delivery van and a ute. He leans back idly against the seat, still in his leather jacket, helmet packed away. His curls are a riot in its wake and in the wind.

Laurent’s thoughts always scatter at the sight of him like this, especially when he doesn’t realize he/s being watched. Damen is big but the jacket makes him look bigger. The bigger he seems, the smaller Laurent feels, and the more irresistible his gravitational pull. The effect Damen has on him is as consistent as it is forceful.

But Laurent would dwell on it later. For now, he reins in every single one of his stray thoughts and spools them tightly.

Damen, lost to the world on his phone, only looks up when Laurent taps impatiently on the frame of his motorbike. Damen beams at him, artlessly. Laurent’s heart leaps towards him, helplessly.

“You mentioned there woud be cake,” says Laurent. His voice sounds more even than he feels.

“And there will be, in a bit. But—uh.” Says Damen, “Well—there’s something you should probably know. Before we go in there.”

Laurent pauses. In a tone he reserves for special occasions—the kind of tone with a capital T and three underlines—he says, “Damen.”

“Don’t get mad.”

“ _Damen_.”

“There’s a—string attached.”

“How long,” Laurent says, deadly, “is this  _string_.”

“Well, we get to test cakes for an hour, and we get to try at least 10 varieties.” Damen says. “The kicker is that they’re wedding cakes, and—well. The people inside? They think we’re engaged.”

Laurent hears the word  _engaged_ , and packs it away before his heart can race on it. Damen doesn’t even have the gall to look sheepish.

Laurent fixes him with a look that would, in a fairer universe, turn Damen to stone. He says, “Tell me that this detail only came to your attention ten minutes ago.”

“I wish I could.” And, under the diamond pressure of Laurent’s glare, all Damen can do is shrug and go, “Listen. It’s  _cake_. I did what I had to do”

Laurent says, “Your will couldn’t fill half a teaspoon,” in the most scathing tone he can muster.

“So you’ll do it?”

Laurent sighs. After a moment, he raises his hands in surrender. Damen smiles at him, and that almost makes it worthwhile.

Laurent begins to map out a plan in his head for how this could go. Immediately, he runs into problems. There are too many variations, too many potential outcomes, too many details that must be papered over with lies. If pressed, they wouldn’t be able to give a wedding date, or a venue, or a celebrant. Or—god, they don’t even have  _rings_.

But more importantly, between now and the door, they need to look like they’re engaged. Like they’re in love. Their bodies need to look comfortable next to each other, like they  _belong_  next to each other, like they’ve done more than just accidentally  _bump hands_ when walking.

Laurent exhales. 

He says, “Move your father’s signet ring to your ring finger. And let me do all the talking.”

* * *

Inside, they are taken to a booth. Four slices of cake and twenty minutes later, Laurent is ready to renounce eating forever. They have made their way through sponge, chocolate, cheesecake and chiffon. Damen asks insightful questions about the difference between buttercream and fondant. He has opinions on marzipan. Several of them, it seems. Laurent has never seen him look so happy.

But the server keeps looking between them, and in particular, lingering on Laurent. He senses her watching him when he’s listening to Damen. When he meets her eye, her brows are furrowed in something approximating a frown. Laurent wonders what’s given them away—and how many wrong moves she’ll give them before she calls her manager.

She leaves, eventually, to get the next selection. When she’s out of earshot, Laurent says, “I don’t think she’s buying it.”

“We can workshop the performance later.” Damen says, cheerfully. He scrapes the final morsel of his pink champagne cake into a dollop of cream, and finishes it off.

Then he licks the goddamn spoon. Twice.

“Damen, I think she’s about to start asking questions.”

Damen doesn’t immediately say anything. And then, into the silence, Laurent sees the edges of a particular smile.

Damen, it seems, is about to have an idea.

The door to the kitchen swings open—their server is on her way back.

Without asking for permission, Damen reaches for Laurent’s hand and winds their fingers together. His grip is tight. His skin is warm. He brings their clasped hands together to his lips and kisses Laurent’s knuckles, and then the back of his hand. Laurent feels the unmistakable  _stir of Damen’s tongue_  against his skin.

He looks Laurent dead in the eye the whole time, smiling like sin.

Laurent’s mind whites out completely.

Damen brings their hands back down to the table, still clasped. Laurent stares down at them like they might burst into flames.

“What,” he says, as quietly and neutrally as he can manage, “is this.”

“Method acting.”

“Damen, she’ll be back. Any second now.”

“Well then,” Damen smiles. “Get used to it.”


	13. Complex

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon. Jokaste's child comes to court. Laurent is better with him than Damen.

The child toddles across the room in his white sleepshirt, and his steps fall soft and uncertain on the marble floor. He has only recently learned to walk without gripping onto firmer hands—or so Jokaste had said.

Damen and Laurent sit cross-legged on the floor near him, reaching out with a steadying hand when his balance threatens to give way. There has never been a child in their chambers before. The room was a curiosity to him—and he was a curiosity to them.

He was a sunny child, and olive skinned like his father had been. When he toddled into the patches of sunshine on the floor, the light split colours out of his chestnut curls. It was easy to make him smile, and he grabbed anything his round little fingers would reach—although he had taken a particular liking to the silver buttons on Laurent’s shirt, and to tugging on Laurent’s hair.

Laurent held a red ball in front of him, and pushed it gently it towards the child. It bounced lightly off his legs and vaulted off in another direction. He began taking uncertain steps towards it. Laurent beamed at him with obvious pleasure.

“I still don’t know,” says Damen, “whether I like that she called him Theomedes.”

“I don’t think your preference matters there,” says Laurent, “King or otherwise.”

Theo reaches the ball and tries to lean down for it. In doing so, he knocks it further away, and resumes the chase.

“I would have done the same,” says Laurent.

“Really?”

“Absolutely.” He begins to count out the advantages on his fingers, reciting them as he goes. “First, it honours his grandfather. It doesn’t quite atone for Kastor’s sins, but it pays appropriate tribute. Second,” he says, “to say his name is to remember the royalty in his blood. If little Theo should ever challenge for the throne, he has a name that can rally bannermen around him. And third,” he adds, “it never lets you forget who Jokaste used to be.”

Damen gives him a withering look.

“Try to sound less impressed with her. For my sake.”

“I  _am_  impressed. I don’t trust her, but I won’t fault her strategy.”

By this point, Theo had lost interest in the ball. He wanders slowly back towards them, making a beeline for Laurent, who reaches out for him. Theo falls gleefully into his arms, his peals of laughter muffled in the fabric of Laurent’s shirt. Laurent wraps his arms around the child and pulls the bundle of him into his lap.

The sight of them pulls Damen’s heart in multiple directions. There is a particular warmth in Laurent’s expression, a momentary suspension of the control he wears like a second skin. He is so good with children, so easy with his tenderness towards them. He pulls faces and blows raspberries without shame and each time, Damen’s heart swells so much he thinks the might keel over with love for him.

“I think he prefers me,” says Laurent, eyes dancing in Damen’s direction.

“Because you’re pale and fair. He thinks you’re his mother.”

“Well.” Laurent smiles wryly, and plants a soft kiss on the crown of Theo’s head. “It’s not the child’s fault that his uncle has a  _type_.”

Damen shifts closer, until his knees are almost touching Laurent’s. Theo fidgets in the space that has narrowed between them, and Damen reaches for one of the other toys beside them. This one is a soft doll. He offers it to Theo, who receives it, and promptly sticks it into his mouth.

They watch him in silence for a long while.

Damen runs his hand through Theo’s hair, and it feels too light and delicate to be real. He thinks:  _this is my blood. Kastor’s blood. My father’s blood_. The same three thoughts had revisited him, over and over, since Jokaste had formally presented the child at court.

“If I had known that toddlers could silence you,” says Laurent, “I would have ordered court flooded with them long ago.”

Damen does not respond immediately. He leans back on his hands.

“What do I do with him?” He says.

“Nothing. He’s not yet two.”

“Do I acknowledge him or renounce him? Do I have him raised away from court, and foster his resentment? Or is it better to bring him here, and raise him under the shadow of his father’s legacy?”

“Court is no place for a child.”

“We were raised in court.”

“And look what became of us. We were never children. You had to lead armies before you were 18, and I had to abandon childhood games for adult ones. Court either swaddles a child with so much comfort that it blinds him, or if it doesn’t, it it cuts short his youth.”

Theo loses interest in the doll, and drops it to the floor. He turns back to Laurent’s shirt, and grasps for one of the buttons. Laurent pulls him further onto his lap, and smiles down. It’s a wistful smile—a little sad, perhaps—borne of his own thoughts rather than anything Theo has done.

Theo settles in Laurent’s lap and leans against his chest, allowing himself to be held. Laurent wraps his arms tightly around the child. He stills around Laurent in a way that he won’t with Damen.

“He played such a role in what happened to you and I.” Says Laurent quietly. “And he has no idea.”

“I want to keep it that way. I want him to be a child. Nothing more. Not yet.”

“A noble intention. You have my sympathy.” Says Laurent. “But I wonder—will you have Jokaste’s?”


	14. Vulnerable/Strong

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set in the slave baths immediately after the end of Kings Rising.

Damen watched his own blood pool around him, radiating out from where he sat, seeping over the tiles and into the fissures between them. There was too much of it. 

He watched it as though from a distance, unable to believe that it had all once flowed through his veins. It coursed along the slope of the marble floor, down to one of the drains, and there it dripped away. His energy seemed to drip away with it.

But he said nothing, and Laurent said nothing. They sat in silence, Damen’s hand over his wound, Laurent’s hand over Damen’s. The blood seemed darker against Laurent’s pale skin somehow, an angrier shade of red. His mouth was a thin, harsh line, and his features were cast in stone. Laurent focused on Damen’s wound as though he could close and suture it through the sheer force of his will.

Damen wanted to close his eyes. He wanted to collapse onto the floor and pass out until help arrived. His body rarely failed him, but now he seemed to feel the weight of every single bone, and every individual muscle, and he had to fight against all of them to keep himself upright.

And he did, because he had to. An image came to him of Laurent, alone and bedraggled in the slave baths, next to the last body he had killed and cradling the last body he had loved. He would not leave Laurent alone. Not while Laurent remained firm next to him, carrying his own weight, the only fixed point in a room that otherwise seemed to blur in and out of focus.

It was criminal, that Laurent had to experience Ios for the first time like this. Criminal that they had won, and almost immediately found themselves on the verge of losing again.

Laurent’s chiton wouldn’t pass for a rag by now. It bunched on his lap, limp against his skin, damp with so much of Damen’s blood that they could wring it dry and fill a basin. But even in this state, there was no mistaking Laurent for what he was – a King, iron in his spine. His breathing didn’t betray a shred of trepidation. His hand did not tremor against Damen’s skin.

“I don’t—” Damen says, and stops, and winces at the effort it takes him to speak even those two words.

“Quiet.” Laurent says, all feeling neutered out of his tone. “Don’t exert yourself.”

Damen takes a moment to steady his breathing. When he recovers, he says, slowly, “I don’t intend to die.”

The silence that follows is heavy, and Laurent doesn’t make a single noise to disrupt it. Damen knows that he’s now made a promise, the keeping of which is out of his control. But he wants to give Laurent something to hold onto. In the moment, it’s all he has to offer. 

“If you die,” Laurent says eventually, stone-faced, “I will feed Kastor’s body to the dogs myself.”

Damen inhales sharply.

“ _Laurent_.”

Kastor lies motionless a few feet away from them. Damen can’t bring himself to look at his brother.

Damen shifts slightly and a white pain engulfs his senses. Laurent’s other hand reflexively comes to his back, and begins rubbing firm lines up and down his spine. Damen gives in and closes his eyes, leaning his forehead to Laurent’s, allowing him to take his weight. He tunnels his awareness, till the room ceases to exist beyond the two places where Laurent is touching him.

When Laurent eventually answers, his words are precise and unrepentant.

“If you die,” he swears calmly, “I will have his body desecrated. I will hang it in chains and leave it to fester in public, till it resembles the rot in his soul. I’ll dismember it with my own hands, and feed his flesh to the dogs, and run carriages over his bones. I will never let him rest. Not if you die.”

“Laurent—“

“—so,” he continues, “if you intend to honour your brother with a proper burial, survive. Because if you die, I won’t.”


	15. Journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU. Fake dating AU. Let’s-convince-my-family-I-finally-have-a-boyfriend AU.

“One more time,” says Laurent.

Damen’s hands tighten around the steering wheel. “You said that five times ago.”

“I did. And then you mixed up my birthday and the story of how we met,” he says. “So, we will  _keep practising_ , until you get it right.”

They fall into a barbed silence. The engine of their shitty rental car whines into the quiet, and Laurent wonders how much louder it needs to get before they should start worrying. He turns up the radio just loud enough to drown out the worst of it.

“Do you think they’ll fall for it?” Damen says.

“Auguste won’t. He’ll see right through you.” Laurent says. “But it’s not him I’m trying to convince.”

They pass a sign that indicates 50 kilometres to Arles. The pit of Laurent’s stomach clenches at the reminder, but he tries to breathe it loose. The landscape had begun changing an hour ago, three-storey towns dispersing into farmland, and then into thickets of ever-denser pine. The closer the road brings them to his home, the harder it becomes to sit comfortably.

They had stopped for petrol three hours ago, and Damen had returned to the car with a plastic bag full of sugar in all its solid and liquid forms. Laurent had given the bag a withering look when Damen placed it at his feet. Now, he forgives all, and reaches in for a Kit-Kat.

After a moment, Damen says. “Aren’t you going to offer me one?”

“I need it more than you do.” Laurent says. “And you still owe me a perfect recitation.”

Damen sighs.

“Christ,  _fine_.” He begins. “Your birthday is October 13. We met at Jord’s 30 th, and I was only there because I had tagged along with Nik. We started talking in the kitchen and we’ve been inseparable ever since. Your favourite album is Back to Black by Amy Winehouse, and when you can’t be fussed cooking, you order in beef pho and crab spring rolls from the Vietnamese place downstairs. We’ve supposedly been together for five months , and the plan is for me to meet your parents first. Then, I’ll supposedly introduce you to mine.”

He briefly looks away from the road to Laurent. He’s raised an eyebrow, and he looks damned pleased with himself.

“Good enough, dickhead?”

“Just.” Laurent says, even though it is. He fights back a smile. “I prefer the mixed spring rolls, but that’ll do.”

Damen relaxes back into his seat and holds out his hand for a Kit-Kat. Laurent unwraps a whole new bar for him, and Damen bites into three of its wafers at the same time like a  _barbarian_.

“How heavy do you want me to lay down the PDA?” Damen asks, between mouthfuls. “Do I hold your hand under the table at dinner? Over the table? Or what? Do I kiss you in front of the grandparents?”

This time, when Laurent fights back the smile, the smile fights back. And it wins.

“We don’t need to overdo it. I told them you’ll be sleeping in my room. That should take care of it.”

Laurent says it, and then he holds his breath, and waits for Damen to react.

His initial plan had been to tell Damen about the bedsharing thing when he set the whole plan in motion. Laurent had invited him to brunch, and asked him to be his pretend boyfriend for a weekend during Easter break, just to get his parents off his back this  _one time_. And Laurent knows—he  _knows_ —he should have laid out this crucial detail at the same time.

But it’s done now.

Damen looks away from the road,  _again_. At this rate, Laurent thinks, they might not even make it to Arles for the bed-sharing to be a problem.

“We’re what?”

“You heard me.” Laurent says, looking very intently at the road ahead.

“Is this a—bunk bed situation?” Damen says.

“Do I look like I’m three? No. This isn’t a bunk bed situation. There’s no spare mattress on the floor either. It’d look suspicious.”

“So, we just—what? Sleep in the same bed for three nights?”

“We do.” Laurent says, summoning his most neutral tone. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Damen doesn’t answer immediately. It shifts the air a little further on the wrong side of comfortable.

“No. No problem.” Says Damen. "If you’re the little spoon.”

“There will be  _no spooning_.”

“I’m just thinking aloud,” he says. “You should probably know that when I sleep, sometimes—I get a little—”

“—a little  _what_.”

“A little cuddly.”

It’s Laurent’s turn to fall silent.

The problem is: he can see it. He doesn’t even have to close eyes to picture the early hours of the morning before the sun’s come up. They’d be in bed— _his_  bed, christ, under the same Hitchcock poster he put up when he was  _fifteen_ — covered in blankets, half the pillows on the floor, Damen stirring next to him.

Damen reaching over even though he’s half-asleep, hands searching the sheets and finding Laurent. Damen’s stupid, muscled arms pulling him closer under the blankets, wrapping around him, not even realizing what he’s done.

Laurent can see it because he’s imagined it. With regularity. For quite some time.

But he says: “Cuddle me, and you die.”

"Fine. But we’ll need to rock your bed at least once—”

“—Damen—”

“—and make loud sex noises—“

“— _no—”_

“—for authenticity.”

“— _stop_.”

The problem once again is this: Laurent can see it.

“There  _is_  an alternative.” Damen suggests, shit-eating grin at the ready.

“Thank god. What is it?”

“We could fuck for real.”


	16. I Know Who You Are, Damianos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon. Afterlife fic. It ends happy. I promise.

Damen dies peacefully in his sleep, age 80, at the end of the harvest festival. Laurent is at his side. It is the fifty-fifth year of their reign.

When Damen dies, he finds himself in a long corridor of white marble arches. They span further than his eyes can see, illuminated so brightly that it hurts to focus on the distance.

There is something waiting for him, splintered and faint. It coheres, and comes closer, and then it becomes a  _someone_. Damen struggles to focus on the face at first, but he cannot shake the feeling of knowing it. Something in him recognizes something in it.

Damen knows he is dead, and knows too that the figure must be dead as well. He rifles through his memory, and begins to rule out who it isn’t. Not Theomedes, whose face has almost fallen off the edges of his memory; nor his mother, whose face he had reconstructed in his imagination. Not Kastor, whose memory had never dulled; nor Nikandros, who had departed five years earlier.

He scrolls through a lifetime of faces, and comes back to one, and stops on it. When he does, the figure materializes. Or perhaps it comes into focus.

The figure is Auguste.

Auguste, laced in Veretian layers, in his brother’s starburst blue. Auguste, hair loose to his shoulders, like Laurent used to wear  _his_. Auguste, sporting a fulsome beard the colour of dark honey, smiling quietly, his blue eyes luminous even against the white light that surrounds them.

Damen has lived a long life. He has lived three of Auguste’s lifetimes. He has fought battles and waged wars, and won them. 

Still, he kneels.

Auguste looks worthy of a man’s bended knee. He carries all the grace and gravity of the throne he never claimed. Damen begins to understand, in this moment, the adoration that followed Auguste in his lifetime, and that his death only served to amplify. He also begins to understand the full force of the hatred Laurent once felt for him, for taking this away.

Damen looks to the floor. He does not know what else to do.

“Auguste.” He says, voice slipping on the word.

Auguste steps closer. Damen feels gentle fingers at the top of his head. A benediction.

“Hello, Damen.”

His voice is gentler than it had been at Marlas. His greeting is familiar, and his tone is almost fond. Damen can hear echoes of Laurent in it. With a jolt in his chest, he realizes for the first time that he has left Laurent behind.

But Damen keeps his eyes to the ground. He says “You look well,” because he doesn’t have the words for anything else. And there is so much else to say.

Auguste is Damen’s height, and closer to his build than Laurent, as solid as his brother is lithe. He looks like the king he might have been had fate not made instruments of Damen and his sword.

“Thank you,” he says, “but I always preferred my armour to court attire. I was glad to die in it.”

_Gods_ , Damen thinks. He closes his eyes. There was no precedent for a conversation such as this one. When he lived, he had believed in the finality of death. He had never mapped out what he would say and now found himself unmoored, unsure.

“I don’t know if I can ask for your forgiveness.” He says.

“You needn’t, when you have so thoroughly earned it.”

“I threw Vere into tumult.”

“I know you did,“ says Auguste. “I watched it all from here.”

Damen relives that history in a moment, heart pounding. There is a silence between them, not uncomfortable, but heavy with the weight of all the things that Auguste must have seen.

“Time becomes elastic, when you die. It lengthens, and I have been here for a very long time,” says Auguste, thoughtful. He pauses for a while before continuing. “But I have watched my brother, and I have watched you. You and Laurent have built a fine kingdom between you.”

Damen wishes Laurent was here to hear him say it. He wants Laurent to hear Auguste speak his name, and to praise him. His heart aches again, at the thought of this strange new existence without him.

He says, “I deprived him of you. I orphaned him.”

“You did. I know, too, that you hated him for a time.”

A wave of fiery shame washes over Damen’s face, but he withstands it and holds his tongue. 

“But then, Damen, you saw him for who he was. I watched you come to realize it. I watched you deliver him to his throne, and love him as he deserved to be loved.”

“Is it enough, given what I took from him?”

It is a fear he has kept to himself for years, quietly, shielded between his hand and his heart. It is perhaps the one thing he has never shared with Laurent.

He feels Auguste’s hand come to his shoulder. His grip is firm and reassuring.

“It is enough,” says Auguste. “Rise, brother.”


	17. Loss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon, post-Summer Palace. Laurent burns, and pines, and perishes for Damen.

Laurent’s bed is cold and empty. He is safe in Arles, and Damen is safe in Ios, but safety neither fills nor warms a bed.

He closes his eyes and presses his face into the pillow. He inhales, and summons the salt of the sea breeze. He imagines open windows and white hangings fluttering against the wind, white flowers in the gardens and white flowers in his hair. He focuses, and returns himself to the outflung balcony, where the ocean blue extends so far into the horizon that it becomes sky. Damen is at his side, his skin running warm in every place it meets Laurent.

In the Summer Palace, they had time. They luxuriated in it. They learned that they were very good at spending it, and they did so, indulgently.

It was too soon to celebrate, so they didn’t. In Ios, a fractured government awaited Damen, its loyalties declared in his favour but untested. In Arles, Laurent had years of his uncle’s rule to unmake. Their grip on their kingdoms was water in cupped hands.

But at the Summer Palace, they allowed themselves a brief respite. They gave themselves two weeks, and no more, to be the simplest of what they were: two young people terrifyingly in love. The problems awaiting them would keep.

Damen had launched a sustained campaign to overwhelm him at every turn. Laurent learned very quickly what Damen could do, with two weeks. He learned all the ways in which Damen touched, and courted, and kissed when given time. Laurent received all his tenderness like a man starved. He allowed himself everything.

But Laurent had returned to Arles, and Arles was lonely without Damen.

He turns on his back and feels the emptiness of the room around him like a weight on his chest. His body feels rife with an energy he cannot harness or spend. Sleep is out of his reach.

And he aches. He had known it would ache even at the Summer Palace, when he realized that they had passed more days there than they had left. His only comfort is that Damen is in Ios, likely aching for him too.

A moment more of restlessness, and then he slips out of bed.

Laurent goes to his desk and finds a slip of parchment and ink. He takes both to the fireplace, where he lights a flame and tends it. He waits until the fire blazes, until the heat of it is almost uncomfortable against the frigid air that hangs in the rest of the room.

Then, he begins to write.

He has taken to writing letters to Damen,, long ones that he doesn’t intend to send. He writes everything he feels, and doesn’t pause to measure his words before he commits them in ink. They are the most honest words he owns, and because of their honesty, they are dangerous words—perhaps too dangerous to be spoken, and undoubtedly too dangerous for parchment and all its permanence.

There is a certain violence to them. When he finishes each letter and reads it over, his own words frighten him. Each slip of parchment is like a mirror held up to his heart, a repository of the exact vulnerability he swore never again to harbour.

What frightens him more is the desire to keep each letter. There are now four of them. Four times, he has lit the fire intending to throw them in, and four times, he has resiled. Instead, he takes them and seals them and hides them in the one place in his room known only to himself, a hidden niche he crafted when he was fifteen.

He wants to bring them to Damen, to sit down with him and watch him read each one, to lay his soul bare and to tell him:  _See me._

_See what you have done with me._

He wants Damen to know. That thought frightens him most of all.


	18. Politics; Tenderness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon divergence. Diplomacy by chiton. AU where no one dies and everyone lives and nothing is complicated!

Laurent is thirteen when Vere and Akielos declare peace. It is a fragile, tentative thing. The Treaty of Marlas is signed by King Theomedes and King Aleron, and it is mistrusted by everyone except those who had toiled to achieve it.

* * *

Laurent is fourteen when, on the Treaty’s first anniversary, the Kings decide to make their children instruments of the peace they have forged.

That year, the Veretian court plays host to Prince Damianos for the first time. When he returns to Akielos, Auguste and Laurent are in his company. On every subsequent anniversary of the Treaty, for a period of six weeks, Vere and Akielos deliver their heirs into the custody of the other. The three princes come to know each other with the hopes of two nations on their shoulders, their growing friendship the security on which peace has been staked.

* * *

Laurent is sixteen when he finds his voice in Akielos, emerging from behind his brother’s sleeve. In each moment, he is acutely aware of the court’s lingering gaze on him, but he learns to accept the attention for the curiosity that it is, and not the hostility he initially presumes it to be.  He is still cautious of the Akielon court but no longer afraid of it, even though every ceremony, every conversation, is a lesson in differences.

At their age, diplomacy means feasting and sports. Auguste is born to both, and takes to them with a spirit befitting his future station. The Treaty commemorations become a calendar of tourneys for the heirs and their guards, an exchange of battles for contests, and bloodshed for boasting rights.

Laurent watches from the periphery, and finds himself burning with strange embers that were not present the previous year. He cannot map them to anything he has felt before. He turns his focus inwards, away from the Akielon court, to examine himself.

This is what he finds: the embers glow for Damianos.

They flare when he enters the ring. The heat of them spreads beneath Laurent’s skin when Damianos approaches an opponent, meeting him not as a king before his subject, but as a soldier before his equal. And when Damianos bests a man to the ground, and then stands up, victorious, smiling like he has won the world, Laurent burns.

* * *

Laurent is seventeen when Auguste bests Damianos at pankration – only once. No one is more pleased than Damianos, who is happy to have met his equal. He gifts Auguste with a chiton, and Auguste is bold and happy enough in this strange land to wear it.

Damianos gifts Laurent with a chiton as well, delivered to his chambers by Euphron, the most senior of Damianos’s guard.  The chiton is a little longer than his brother’s, falling to knee-length, and the fabric is tessellated with shapes that are only visible in the light. It is so soft that Laurent wonders whether it might dissolve between his fingertips. He finds an accompanying golden pin in a square of folded cloth. In its centre is a blue gemstone set in gold.

The gift is lavish and Laurent has done nothing to deserve it. He has sat in silence at every event, observing with his hands folded in his lap. He has won nothing, participated in nothing, provided nothing in exchange. The chiton is a gift offered for the sake of parity with Auguste, a token of the generosity in Damen’s spirit that Laurent is coming to know.

He does not want to wear it, but understands that he must. He begins practising how to do so in the privacy of his chambers. He passes hours in front of a mirror, teaching himself all the ways a chiton could be made to drape around a body,  and battles how immodest it feels even in his own company. He ventures outside to his balcony and stands still in the suffocating heat, baring his skin to the sunshine. Then he practices how to walk without smoothing down the fabric over his legs.

He will wear it only once, when it will count most.

Each year, their final night in Akielos is marked with a feast thrown in their honour. It is a King’s feast, attended by the entire court, for which no expense or spectacle is spared. Each year, the Veretian Princes attend in their finest finery. Laurent does not tell Auguste of his plan.

When Auguste comes to collect him, his surprise at Laurent’s attire shows for only a moment before he thinks to wipe it away. He does not ask about its origins. Auguste tells him fondly, _It suits you, brother,_ and then smiles as though knowing something Laurent doesn’t. When they follow a herald to the feast, they speak only of the journey home.

They are the guests of honour and arrive last. The throne room is a long hall, constructed entirely of dark marble, red for the King’s colour. Long colonnades line the sides of the room, rising from the floor to the coffered ceiling, framing the royal family in grandeur. Every single time Laurent sets foot in this space, the effect is disorienting.

But for the first time during this visit—during  _any_  visit, really—Laurent is the centre of attention. It is not a position he covets. He has never once envied Auguste his imminent throne, nor longed to be firstborn. He has been grateful for every step backwards into the shadows he has been able to take.

But Laurent understands the value of a single, compelling performance in the light.

As he and Auguste proceed down the room, the Akielon court murmurs in their wake. He hears whispers of surprise and fragments of approval, and finds them reflected in the smile of King Theomedes, who for once is looking at Laurent and not his brother. He beams as though Laurent has won the okton.

The brothers kneel before the throne. When they rise, King Theomedes has stood up and stepped forward. He places his giant hands on Laurent’s shoulders like a father, and speaks with a boom loud enough to reach Patras.

“I was not aware you owned a chiton.” He says fondly. “You honour us, young prince.”

Laurent smiles gratefully. Then, for the first time that night, he allows himself to look to the King’s right.

Damianos has not yet managed to filter his surprise. He takes in Laurent from exposed ankle to golden circlet, and when he finally meets Laurent’s eyes, his gaze shines with a new edge. It is bright enough for the whole court to see, a naked look, as vulnerable as Laurent is exposed. Its intent is unequivocal.

Laurent has seen it before, directed at soldiers and pets, and whoever else catches the insatiate eye of the Crown Prince. It had never been directed at him before.

But now it has. And Laurent vows to keep it there.

* * *

Laurent is nineteen, standing outside Damianos’s chambers, on the edge of an argument with his guards.

He says to them, “The Crown Prince is expecting me”, when he knows they have no such instructions. He gives them a look that dares them to challenge him.

He knows he has placed the guards in an impossible quandary. Their options are to challenge him and risk insulting the throne of Vere, or to let him through and risk the ire of their own prince. He waits imperiously, amplifying the markers of his displeasure for their benefit.

Euphron breaks first and stands aside. Lucian follows suit. Laurent’s own guards take place on either side of them, and he is allowed through the doors. When they are firmly closed behind him, he takes in his surroundings.

The room is an assembly of large tables, each burdened with more books and maps than they should bear; and the walls are mostly open windows. The gossamer curtains skirting them shift gently in the evening breeze. The air is light with the scent of incense long extinguished.

He has been in Damen’s rooms before, but never without Auguste, and never at this time of the night.

Damen says, “Laurent?”

Laurent turns towards the sound. Damen is to the left of the room, emerging from one of its chambers. He is freshly bathed, a towel around his waist, loose drops falling from his wet hair. They trail lines down his arms and his chest.

Laurent has seen him like this—has seen him in less, even—but the knowledge of what he is about to ask, of what they might do, casts the shape of him in a new light.

He says, “Hello.”

Damen wears an expression that Laurent hasn’t previously seen, somewhere between caution and confusion. He takes a few, tentative steps in Laurent’s direction, but stops short of reaching him.

“You’re—“ Damen says. “My guards let you in?”

“I told them you were expecting me.”

“Did they know you were lying?”

“Almost certainly.”

“But they didn’t ask why you were here.”

“I think they knew.” He says. And then, with more bravery than he feels, adds: “I think you know, too.”

A noise, a bewildered exhale, is all Damen manages in response.

Whatever has happened between them has ripened slowly, under the watchful eyes of their families and their courts. It has been a courtship of stolen moments, of warmth conveyed more often through looks than words, of lacing desire into the smallest of deeds. They kiss in the depths of the libraries, where no one would think to find them, or after long rides away from the palace, where no one is around to see them.

Laurent knows that they have turned quiet affection into an art form, but he has had his fill of it.

“You might have been seen, on your way here.” Damen says, low.

“I don’t care.”

“And if they talk?”

“Let them,” Laurent says, voice even, “till every one of them knows that we belong to each other.”

Damen comes to him. He closes the space between them till Laurent can feel the heat from the baths radiating off his skin. He raises his hands and cups Laurent’s face, gentle as he has ever been. His gaze catches on Laurent’s parted lips before he seems to remember himself, and looks up,

Damen has a particular way of looking at him, whether they’re alone or in the middle of a crowded room. It exists on the very edges of Akielon propriety. It’s also the only thing powerful enough to extinguish every thought in Laurent’s mind.

“Laurent.” Damen says, quiet and wonderous. “My Laurent.”

Laurent’s heart skips a beat in response. When it recovers, it beats in double-time. It used to take more than this to unspool him. He used to freeze under affection, knowing little about how to receive it and even less about offering it in return.

He knows a little more, now.

“Say that again,” he asks. It’s a selfish request, made because he knows that Damen will indulge him.

“My Laurent,” Damen says, warm as the afternoon sun. He leans in to kiss him, once and then again, softly.

Laurent wants more—his body aches for more—and Damen offers a taste of it. His hands smooth down Laurent’s sides and cradle his hips, pulling him closer and holding him there. Between his firm grip and Laurent’s skin are Laurent’s jacket, his shirt, and his trousers. Far too many layers.

He wants them off, discarded like crumbs on the floor, on the way to bed. He wants to be pushed down onto to the sheets, wants to feel Damen’s weight above him, to be held down by it, to push against it and find it immovable. He wants to know what Damen’s mouth feels like on every part of him, to pull Damen towards the edges of his control, to make a frenzy of his breath, to catalogue every soft sound he makes as he nears his brink.

Laurent has heard enough whispers about Damen in bed to fill volumes. He wants to burn them and write his own.

But still, Damen’s kisses fall gently. They’re far more chaste than anything Laurent had come for, and the tenderness only inflames the heat already gathering under his skin.

“Perhaps you don’t understand,” he says, breathless.

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” says Damen.

He leans in again, and this time he kisses Laurent like he wants to be kissed: red-blooded and needy, and pulls him to bed.


	19. Rise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is part 2 of the Modern AU where Laurent is an overworked junior doctor, and Damen is the patron saint of doting husbands. Part 1 is in prompt 6 (Power), 
> 
> This is domestic fluff AU of the shamelessly soft variety; Laurent can conquer kingdoms in other universes but he can’t bake for shit in this one.

It’s a cold and blustery Saturday morning. Damen runs errands till midday and then all but sprints from the bus stop to their front door. The bus home had smelled like wet dog, its passengers piled in tightly like sardines in a can.

The paper bag with the groceries is heavy in his arms, and it’s wet. His coat is wet. Everything is  _wet_ , and the wind cuts at his cheeks. When he tries to open the front door, the keys slip from his fingers to the concrete. It’s a dark moment.

But he recovers the keys, and his dexterity, and he shivers with pleasure when he steps inside, the warmth of the house washing over him. He had lit the fireplace first thing in the morning, and left it on for Laurent, who was still sleeping when he left. He sheds every sodden layer—the coat, the gloves, the scarf, the socks—and tosses them in the basket Laurent keeps by the front door during winter.

Then, he notices the smell of fresh baking.

Groceries in hand, he goes to the kitchen to investigate. He finds Laurent on the floor, cross-legged on the tiles. He’s still in his pyjamas, although he’s layered one of Damen’s red hoodies on top for extra warmth. It’s far too big on him, hanging mid-thigh and bunched heavily around his forearms. Damen suspects he could fit three Laurents into each hoodie, but Laurent insists on wearing them anyway. Damen won’t stop him.

He sits directly in front of the oven, leaning forward. His elbows rest on his knees, and his chin rests stubbornly atop clasped hands. He’s staring at the oven like there’s a blood feud between them.

If Laurent hears Damen come in—and he must—he doesn’t look up to acknowledge him. Damen deposits the groceries on a countertop and goes to join him on the floor. He gently nudges Laurent’s leg with his knee.

“What are we doing?” He asks.

“We,” says Laurent, “are despairing.”

Damen looks into the oven. Inside it are two bread pans. A quick survey of the kitchen reveals that whatever was used to make their contents has long been packed away.

“And we’re despairing because—?”

“Because the fucking brioche won’t  _rise_ ,” says Laurent, caustic. ”That’s why.”

He says it like he’s talking about a patient. As though it’s a big deal. As though it  _matters_ , somehow. Then he stops, and plays back what he said, and hears the tone of his voice . He closes his eyes and scrubs his hands over his face.

Damen watches him carefully. This is the first day off that Laurent’s had in two weeks. Laurent always needs a bit of time to adjust to days off.

That he had still been asleep when Damen left at 9am was nothing short of a miracle. Normally, he woke up at quarter to six, like he always did, and pottered around the flat working himself up into a frenzy, trying to be  _productive_.

But this morning, he had slumbered so heavily that even the oafish sounds of Damen getting ready couldn’t wake him. Damen had accidentally dropped no less than three bottles in the shower, but Laurent had slept through every smack of plastic against tile.

It was still barely a dent in all the rest he owed his body. Damen had hoped to find him still asleep when he returned from the markets.

But here he was, sublimating his rage through baking. Apparently.

“So, uh—since when did you bake?”

“Since Auguste decided to have an entirely  _home-made_  thirtieth party.” He says, emphasizing ‘home-made’ like a curse word. “He’s asked us to buy three-dozen mason jars for next weekend, by the way. And bunting.”

“Bunting?”

“Yes.  _Bunting_.” Laurent says, darkly. “There’s a Pinterest board involved.”

There’s also a smudge of flour on Laurent’s cheek. Damen absently licks his thumb and swipes it off. Laurent tries to bat his hand away but doesn’t manage in time, and the service earns Damen a look of disgust. Laurent wipes off his cheek.

“Still doesn’t explain why you’re on the floor.” Damen says. “You can’t glare a loaf of bread into rising.”

“Watch me.”

Damen—who had taken him seriously right up until this very point, and who had done  _so_   _well_ to resist a smile—feels himself falter. He purses his lips together in a late attempt to stop it, but its corners betray him.

Laurent finally looks away from the oven, and catches his expression. It’s a testament to how long they’ve been together, that he wears his annoyance in bright colours for Damen.

Laurent asks, low and dangerous: “Are you  _enjoying_  this?”

The truth was this: “You’re gorgeous when you’re pissed off.”

It dampens Laurent’s scowl. Just a little.

Laurent was the most capable person in Damen’s life—and indeed, in the life of anyone who knew him. He treated each challenge as something to be measured, assessed, and resolved, and he did all three with a mechanical efficiency that bordered on infuriating.

But sometimes—and rarely enough that Damen could count only three incidents in the five years they’d been together—Laurent encountered something that faltered his step.

It was always something small. Never anything serious. Which is why Damen never felt too bad about enjoying it.

He places a hand at the small of Laurent’s back, and begins rubbing soothing circles against his layers.

“Even if the loaf doesn’t rise.” He says. “You can try again.”

“You don’t understand: I’ve made two batches already. This is the third.”

“So make a fourth.”

“We’re out of eggs.”

“Then I’ll go back to the market and get you more. We can make the fourth batch together,” he says, and he can’t keep the fondness out of his voice..

Laurent shifts a little in his place on the floor, and his gaze flits uneasily back to the oven. The offer of help, it seems, will not be welcomed with open arms.

“At this risk of making this A Thing—”

“Oh, sweetheart. ” Damen says wryly. “We’re  _well_  past that.”

“—I think I need to do this on my own.”

He says it quietly. Hesitantly. He is embarassed about it.

They’ve talked about this, sometimes: the way Laurent doesn’t ask for help, even when he should, even if it’s just from Damen, even about something stupid like this. Maybe they need to talk about it again.

But they can do that later. For now, Damen softens. He opens his arms and Laurent moves into his lap, back pressed against Damen’s chest, allowing himself to be held. Damen wraps his arms tightly around him, pleased when he elicits a thoughtless, pleasured sound. Damen chases more of it, pressing his lips to the side of Laurent’s neck in a string of warm, lingering kisses.

“Stop,” says Laurent, but it’s only half a protest. Damen can hear the smile in his voice.

“If you won’t let me help you, then at least let me distract you.”

“I need to take them out in 25 minutes.”

“Then set a fucking timer.” Damen says, hotly. “Come on. Get up.”

He shifts to rise, giving Laurent no choice but to get up with him. When they’ve both stood up, he crowds Laurent till his back’s against the edge of the counter, and kisses him again – this time on his petulant mouth, hands snaking underneath his layers, skin against skin.

Laurent reaches absently for his phone, and begins setting the timer.

“They’re going to burn.” He says. “Damn you.”

“Fucking let them.” Damen growls, and pulls him back to bed.

24 minutes later, Laurent is naked. Damen has messed up his hair and the sheets around him in equal measure. His will is melted butter, like it always is after he’s freshly fucked, and he’s smiling with his eyes closed. He’s a rumpled vision, and he looks ready to go back to sleep.

Damen is next to him, leaning up on one arm, admiring a job well done. He traces lazy lines up and down the inside of Laurent’s elbow, feeling rather satisfied with himself.

Then, Laurent’s phone begins to vibrate. The blasted timer.

Laurent doesn’t want anything to do with it. He rolls over onto his stomach and pulls the duvet over his head.

Damen grins at the shape of him under the covers. “I thought you were worried they’d burn.”

“What was it you said?” Laurent says, the words muffled into his pillow. “Fucking let them.”


	20. Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damen/Jokaste. Pre-canon Akielos. Pillow-talk.

Jokaste comes in his arms, her body arching off the bed underneath him. The slender line of her neck rises and curves in his direction as though in invitation, as though her skin is presenting itself to him. It’s a perfect expanse, and Damen can’t resist it. He can’t resist her. As her body falls through its final throes, he leans his head down and kisses her neck, directly above her pulse.

A wild, irresponsible part of him wants to leave a mark there. He wants her to look in the mirror tomorrow and remember him. He wants her to go about her day and forget about it, till her fingers absently skim her neck and feel the tender skin. He wants her to hide it, to wear silk scarves in the middle of summer and have the court asking  _why_.

Damen wants a lot of things, when it comes to Jokaste.

What  _she_  wants is harder to divine. Sometimes she wants distance immediately after they fuck—for him to keep to the other side of the bed, if not leave her rooms altogether. But she doesn’t ask him to leave tonight, and skims a leg absently against his own by way of invitation. So he stays.

He wants to kiss her again, long and desperate, to run his hands against her skin until she becomes soft and pliant and wants him again. But he doesn’t. He moves next to her and lies on his front, his body pressed warm to her side.

Her eyes are closed for a long time. When they finally open, she gazes up at the ceiling intently, deep in thought.

Damen says, “Marry me.”

She responds with a breathless  _ha_ , singular and amused. She says, “ _Damen_ ,” and it’s a warning tone. “You’ve asked me three times.”

“Four.” He says plainly, fondly. “And you’ve never once said no. You’ve offered me four treatises on how complicated it would be, but never a no.”

“Perhaps it’s time for a fifth treatise.”

“Perhaps it’s time you were honest with me.”

Her eyes flash towards him, taken aback.

She’s always at her most unguarded, immediately after they make love. It’s the only time he dares breach the topic, when everything about her is arranged less rigidly. Her skin shines with exertion, hair unpinned and loosened, every lock of it undone by his hand. It falls around her like a halo in the sheets.

He knows that she hates the sight of herself, like this—she hates the lack of control, as much as the honesty that accompanies it—but without question, it’s when he loves her the most. He wants a lifetime of it.

She says, in a voice that hasn’t quite recouped its poise, “Only kings can afford to speak of what they  _want_.”

“You could be queen,” he says. The image of her at his side is always so vivid that it can only be fate. He tells her, “You were made for queendom.”

“Am I?” She says sharply. “Even when I spend a night in your bed, and the next in your brother’s?”

She doesn’t say his name, but Kastor’s company looms large in the room with them.

The tangle between the three of them is a strange and uncomfortable thing. They dine together, walk together, entertain together, and all the while a spectre hangs over their heads: of which bed Jokaste will go to that night.

It’s never mentioned, and its poison is quiet. It seeps backways into every conversation, turning the meaning of even innocent words. And still, they laugh together, even though it’s never far from any their minds.

The court around them knows, of course. It watches the two brothers, and the woman between them, and it wagers. Damen chooses to ignore it.

“Then say no. You’ll never hear me speak of marriage again,” he says boldly, safe in the conviction that she won’t call his bluff. He has never been a gambling man. “I swear it on my father’s throne.”

A moment of emotion seeps into her features, like a gentle ripple in a still lake. To the untrained eye, it would be imperceptible, but Damen has made a profession of studying her. What the ripple means is another question, and he knows better than to guess.

“You’re a triumph of hope over experience.” She says, quietly. “Or else, a fool.”

“Neither. I’m in love with you.”

He says it knowing that it will spike the air around them, and it does.

It tends to, when he speaks of love in her company, in the ardent tone that he reserves only for her. She has never offered him the word in return, but she never recoils from it either. The conversation proceeds on a knifepoint from there, as it always does.

“You use that word too liberally.” She says.

“We both know that I don’t.”

He leans up and forward to kiss her, slow and full of intent, underlining his point. She doesn’t resist at all, and he tastes her lips as they part for him. She returns his kisses in the same heat with which they’re offered, cupping his face and drawing him in. He feels her legs part for him and he shifts between them.

Damen wouldn’t deign to know the inner workings of Jokaste’s mind, but of this he is certain: however brusque her words, or cool and detached her calculations, too much warm blood runs through her veins for her to kiss him like that, and lie through it.

“Marry me,” he says again, and this time it’s a whisper, directly in her ear.

She pushes him back just a little, just enough to look at him. She holds his face steady in her hands. Although she’s still flush, and her lips are still swollen in the wake of his, there’s caution in her eyes.

“Are you so certain that I’ll choose you?” She says softly.

“Certain as my love for you,” he says, nakedly honest. “Certain as my life.”


	21. Fashion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon. Set in Vere.

The Akielon delegation arrives in Arles at sunset, in the last of the cold daylight. Laurent meets them at the front of the palace in full regalia of state, and receives Damen in his armour.

There were too many eyes on them to do anything. The Veretian Court and Damen’s sizeable retinue watch them with an interest that borders on improper, perhaps waiting for a dramatic reunion or a tender embrace. Laurent and Damen had decided well in advance to give them no such pleasure. They greeted each other as kings rather than lovers, and spoke only of the journey.

Laurent delivers them to the pages, and the pages deliver the Akielon retinue to the baths. Of their party, only Damen has been here before, but he realizes quickly that his memories have dulled their most vivid elements—the lush colours of the tiles, the ornate geometry of their arrangement, the sousing scent of juniper.

His men draw snide comparisons with Akielos, and all the elegant austerity of its architecture. A row of Veretian servants line the edge of the baths in case they’re needed, but if they hear the unfavourable commentary, they’re trained not to react. Damen hopes his men haven’t triggered a diplomatic incident before dinner.

He washes quickly and impatiently, eager to get back to Laurent. He leaves his men under the watchful eye of Nikandros, and summons another page to take him to Laurent’s rooms. Damen’s heart seems to beat more forcefully the further away they walk from the baths, and the closer they get to their destination. He half-wonders whether the page, a green youth named Marius who seems terrified of him, can hear it.

Laurent is at his desk when Damen arrives. He abandons his correspondence and stands to greet him with a practised, neutral expression that only barely masks the smile hidden behind it. The room is brightly lit, a dazzle of blue and gold accents.

It looks unfamiliar, and it takes Damen a moment to realize that these were the Regent’s chambers.

His eyes are drawn to the single flash of differing colour in the room – a number of items of clothing, neatly arranged on the bed. Even from a distance, he can tell that they’re a full Veretian costume of state. The heavy jacket is crimson-coloured and embossed in goldwork thread, and two ornate lions are symmetrically embroidered onto either side of its chest, closely resembling the one on his chiton pin. The trousers, shirt and boots look brand new as well.

Three servants stand in a line to the side of the room, waiting to be bid. Laurent says to them, “Leave us.”

They do, and Damen and Laurent watch them as they go. As soon as the large doors firmly shut behind them, they cross the distance to each other and kiss in the middle of the room. Their first few moments alone are inebriating, all touch and no distance.

Damen is the first to break away. He keeps Laurent’s face cupped between his hands for a moment longer before he lets him go, just to look at him. Just because he can. It’s been too long. Laurent’s face seems to mirror his own, brightly lit with joy.

Laurent takes him by the wrist and pulls him over to the clothes on the bed. Damen takes the hem of the coat between his fingers, appraising the garment. It feels luxurious against his skin, heavy and well-made. The goldwork embroidery is meticulous at close range, the work of practised and careful hands.

“You had this made for me.” Damen says, fondly.

“I did.”

“Did you use all the gold thread in Vere?”

“Probably.” Laurent says, with a shadow of a smile. “There’s an awful lot of you to clothe.”

And then, without warning or explanation, Laurent begins to remove his own jacket. He parts the buttons with unthinking speed and takes it off, arranging it neatly on the bed, its cerulean blue a sharp contrast to the crimson beside it.

But there’s red in his cheeks. Even though his movements are precise, he still drifts back into his shyness whenever they re-meet. Damen enjoys that side of him, in all its sweetness and uncertainty.

“You dismissed the servants.” Damen says.

“I did. I want to attend you myself.”

Before Damen can think to respond, Laurent takes a step towards him.

With a single hand, and a forward look in Laurent’s eyes, he unclasps the lion’s pin on Damen’s shoulder. The chiton tumbles to Damen’s waist, and Laurent places the pin carefully on the bed.

The rest of the chiton receives less careful attention, and when Laurent reaches for the single tie around Damen’s waist, he pulls it loose with easy dexterity. The folds of fabric loosen and fall to the ground.

Laurent is almost fully dressed. Damen is now completely naked. It almost always starts like this.

Damen knows Laurent likes it best this way: likes the control, the assymetrical vulnerability. Damen likes it too, especially the way it frees Laurent to wear his desire brightly. Laurent is a king and a beauty, and he could have his pick of this or any kingdom, but he wants Damen only, and is learning to show it brazenly.

“This won’t end well.” Damen says, warm embers in his voice.

“I promise to behave, if you will.”

“And if I don’t feel well-behaved?”

Laurent’s eyes travel down. Between them, Damen is half-hard. They both know how little it would take to coax him in full.

“Damen.” He says, in playful reprimand. “The court dines in an hour.”

“I’d make them wait three, to have you.”

“I don’t doubt it. I’m sure if I let you start, you’d keep them waiting till breakfast.”

“I’d like that. Very much.” Damen says, full of intent. “You  _should_  let me.”

“Later. For now, let me dress you.”

Damen raises his hands in defeat, and allows Laurent to work.

The act of attending him is a lot more perfunctory than what had just passed between them. Laurent orders him to raise his arms for the linen shirt, which falls loose around his thigh. It’s impossibly soft, embroidered with floral motifs across the chest, in careful, intricate stitches. He thinks that it’s almost a crime, to hide such handiwork beneath the confines of the jacket.

Then, Laurent pushes Damen backwards till his knees hit the bed and he has no choice but to sit. Laurent drops to his knees on the floor, and begins helping Damen into his trousers. He attends to the task with care, expression set with more concentration than the task deserves.

He looks focused enough to negotiate a treaty. At the sight of it, a wellspring of adoration blooms in Damen’s chest.

“Have you commissioned Veretian clothing for everyone?” He asks, guiding his leg into one of the pants.

“No. Only for you.”

“So—I’ll be the only Akielon in Veretian clothing”

“You’re the only Akielon who’s the King of Vere.” Laurent points out, lips quirking.

Laurent stands up again and offers his hand, and Damen rises with him, watching as Laurent pulls the trousers up his thighs, and over the hem of the shirt. It’s almost impossibly tight. Damen tries to take a deep breath and only manages a shallow imitation. He’s suddenly aware of how little room the costume allows for the act.

“Do all Veretian tailors disapprove of breathing?”

“I haven’t even laced you  _in_.” Laurent says.

He begins with the laces at the front of his shirt, threading and pulling them taut with mechanical efficiency. Damen watches him work in contented silence. They’ve spent three months apart now—three difficult months, rife with long days and hard decisions. Laurent’s quiet company is a sublime pleasure in contrast.

Laurent’s fingers glide over the fabric, shadowing near Damen’s skin. Damen wants to catch his wrist and stop his hands, pull him in. But once they start, they won’t be able to stop, so he musters every shred of restraint and holds himself still.

“I hope you appreciate how well I’m behaving.” He teases.

Laurent finishes the laces at the front, and takes his left hand. He rubs his thumbs into Damen’s palm fondly before he begins lacing above it, a candid show of affection.

He says, smiling, “I hope you’re not expecting praise for this paltry show of compliance.”

“This isn’t paltry compliance, but if you like, I can show you what that looks like.”

“Save your misbehaviour for the feast, your majesty. We still have a court to scandalize.”

Damen wishes he could lock them both inside this room, and order the feast to continue in their absence. That, surely, would scandalize the court well enough.

“Raise your arms.” Laurent orders.

Damen does, and Laurent helps him into the jacket, joining its buttons with practised skill. When he’s done, he stands back and admires his handiwork. Then he takes Damen to the mirror.

The costume is exceptionally tight, sitting on him like a second skin. It manages, in the same breath, to cover everything and leave almost nothing to the imagination. His size is apparent, every muscle accentuated. He might as well be naked, and examines the mirror with a furrowed brow.

“Do you not think that it’s a bit—small?”

Laurent, on the other hand, is rather enjoying himself.

“Oh, it’s  _definitely_  too small.” he says, low and humorous. “I gave my tailor  _very_  specific instructions.”


	22. Strategy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU. Political whistleblower AU.
> 
> Starring: Senator Damianos Akielos, a hot young upstart politician; and Laurent deVere, a hot overworked and over-achieving journalist.
> 
> This is very silly and I am Extremely fond of it.

Laurent spends the morning covering the plenary session of the Economic and Social Committee, and heads back to the office at midday. When he arrives, most of the newsroom is out for the lunch hour. He counts five heads amongst the sea of computers.

It’s still enough for him to immediately sense that something unusual is afoot. When he walks into the room, all five heads snap towards him and look back down just as quickly, as though they’ve been caught doing something. All five heads make a terrible performance of pretending to work.

It makes for an unconvincing show. He surveys the room for a moment longer, cool and unflinching, but no one dares look back up at him. No one offers an explanation.

He goes to find Nicaise. Nicaise is alone in the junior copy editors’ office, eating lunch at his desk, halfway through a turkey on rye. The document on his screen is bleeding so heavily with red edits that the original text is almost gone. He feels a momentary pang of pity for whoever authored it.

Before Laurent says a word, and without so much as looking at him, Nicaise asks: “Since when did you fraternize with senators?”

“I don’t fraternize with anyone.” He says. “I hate people. You know that.”

“And believe me, they hate you. But there’s a senator in your office.”

Laurent freezes.

When his thoughts kick back into gear, he takes a step back out into the newsroom to look in the direction of his office. It’s on the other side of the large, open space, and the distance to it is littered with computers and printers and other office sundry.

But Nicaise is right: even from here, Laurent can make out the large silhouette of a man in his office.

He he returns inside, looks back at Nicaise, who still only has eyes for his screen.

“Which senator?” Laurent asks sharply.

“Akielos. The younger one.”

“And who let him in?” Laurent asks, by which he means: who is going to  _die today._

Nicaise turns slowly away from his computer, and delivers him a withering look.

“Do I look like your secretary?“

“Keep that tone up, and you will be.”

Nicaise puts down his sandwich for the sole purpose of raising two middle fingers in Laurent’s direction. Without so much as blinking, he turns back to his screen, and just in case Laurent doesn’t get the message, he pops in his headphones.

Nicaise is an irrepressible little shit. It’s exactly why they hired him.

But there are more pressing matters at hand.

Laurent begins making his way back to his office. The closer he gets, the more clearly the senator comes into view. He’s deep inside Laurent’s office, standing at the window, admiring the city view  _from_   _behind my des_ k, Laurent thinks. The sheer nerve of him.

Laurent is not feeling charitable when he arrives: he has three deadlines to meet by the day’s end. The morning’s plenary session had run overtime by an hour and a half, and he needed every spare moment he could squeeze from the afternoon to write.

He knocks on this own door, and is pleased when the sound shakes the senator out of his reverie. He turns and smiles contritely at Laurent, embarrassed at how easily he’s been startled.

It’s a strangely unfiltered response. Un-senatorial. Especially from a man large enough to cause a solar eclipse.

Senator Akielos walks over to the guest’s side of the desk, and extends his hand to Laurent. Laurent takes it, and watches as his hand disappears in the senator’s warm, gigantic grip.

Laurent says, dryly: “I’ve never been received in my own office before.”

Akielos has enough grace to retain his embarrassed look. It’s still a strange contrast to the sheer power of the rest of him—everything from his height, to the perfect tailoring of his charcoal grey suit, to the obvious muscle that it barely conceals. Laurent imagines that he hulks above most people in most rooms.

“My apologies,” says Akielos, and he sounds he like he means it. “I was led here.”

“So I’ve been told,” says Laurent. “You must tell me the name of the gracious culprit.”

Laurent closes the office door behind him. He takes a quick look out the glass and notes that there are more people in the newsroom. Now there are a dozen heads, and again, they all make a very poor show of pretending not to look.

Laurent winds a hand around the drawstring and curtly shutters the blinds. It’s not much privacy, but it’ll do for now. He waves a hand towards one of the chairs in front of his desk, inviting Senator Akielos to sit, which he does.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Senator?” He asks, taking his own chair.

“Please, call me Damen. I’m sorry to bother you. I’m sure you’re busy.” says Akielos.  _Damen_ , Laurent corrects himself. “I’m here because I would like to take you to lunch.”

Whatever Laurent was expecting, it certainly wasn’t  _that_.

“Lunch,” he repeats, neutrally, just to be sure.

“Yes, lunch.” says the Senator. “If you’re free. Which I know you are, because I asked the nice lady at the front desk as soon as I arrived.”

Lauren thinks,  _two people are going to die today._

He leans back in his chair and studies his unexpected guest. The younger of the Akielos brothers is the more natural politician—far less experienced than Kastor, but much better liked. He smiles easily and speaks simply, and does well enough on the late night talk-show circuit to be familiar. The handsomeness doesn’t hurt, either. Nor the dimple. People use a lot of words to describe his face, like  _charming_ , or  _presidential_.

But Laurent is wary of pedestals. Likability is a dangerous platform to cultivate, especially for a politician. It screams to be sullied, and Laurent is wary of ever being tarnished with the same brush.

“We don’t know each other well enough to be lunching, Senator.”

“Perhaps we should. Let me take you out.”

Had Laurent been three or four years younger, and equally less-experienced, he might have mistaken the invitation for personal interest. He might even have been inclined to agree. A handsome face is a handsome face, and it never hurt to build an extra bridge in his line of work.

But he’s shrewder now. He registers the dissonance between the senator’s easy invitation, and the grave expression with which he offers it. There’s something searching in his eyes, and Laurent realizes with a flash that  _lunch_  is a subtext for something else, even though he can’t begin to discern what it might be.

“Lunch.” He says deliberately, eyes keen, just to make sure they’re both on the same page.

Damen’s features relax a little, when he sees that Laurent’s understood him. “Yes, exactly.”

So—lunch means a story. Laurent’s pulse begins racing, the way it always does when he finds a new lead.

It races even though he doesn’t know what the scoop might be, or whether it’ll lead anywhere. The thrill of a new tip-off is always sheer and heady. He quietly drums his fingers against the armrests of his chair, and tries to keep the elation off his face.

“Political or personal?” He asks quietly.

“Political.”

“Involving you?”

“Involving Kastor.”

Laurent stills. A less professional man in his place would have emitted a low, long whistle.

Damen looks away from him, to a point beside his head and outside the window. The struggle to rein in whatever he’s feeling is clear. It’s also clear that he doesn’t want to be here, doing this.

The fact that he’s so uncomfortable tells Laurent something promising about the reliability of what’s to come. But they can discuss that later. He steers the conversation down a slightly different avenue.

“Why me?”

Damen looks back to him, the corner of his mouth betraying an ironic quirk. “You didn’t strike me as the self-doubting type.”

“I’m not. I’m only pointing out that if your story’s as big you think it is, you might be expected to take it higher than a mid-level editor.”

“I don’t need someone with profile. I need someone thorough with a low radar, who hasn’t been around long enough to curry loyalties.”

“I’m obviously flattered, but I’d prefer if you told me the whole truth.”

Damen leans back in his chair and fixes Laurent with a pointed look. Now, he’s smiling.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he begins lightly.

It’s hardly a promising start. Laurent says, “I’m not sure there’s going to be a  _right_  way to take this.”

Damen opens his mouth as though to speak, but pauses and refrains. He looks at a point above Laurent’s head, visibly struggling with how to phrase what he needs to say. It only serves to pique Laurent’s interest, though he can’t imagine that he’s going to like what he hears

“Put it this way.” Damen says, after a considerable number of moments, biting back the worst of his smile. “No one’s going to ask questions if I start spending time with—well. With someone like you.”

“A journalist?”

“A blonde and attractive one.” He says. “I’m—advised that I have something of a  _type_.”

Laurent feels the colour rising in his cheeks, and he can’t do a damned thing to stop it.

Of course Damen has a type. Of course Laurent knows what it is. He picks up as many gossip rags as the next person. He’s seen the conveyer belt of attractive men and women the Senator keeps on his arm.

But he isn’t sure how he feels, about Damen counting him amongst their ilk.

“Your type is— _me_.” He says, just to confirm.

“Yes. Which means people won’t ask too many questions if I spend time with you.”

Laurent clicks, and draws the next few lines by himself. “And you’d like to encourage those misunderstandings, to throw them off your scent … which is why you want to take me to lunch.’

"So you’ll come?”      

Laurent pauses again.

“Yes.” He says. “But senator: we’re going to need to set some ground rules.”


	23. Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FBI Agent AU; is-this-the-right-time-for-this-conversation AU.

After 30 minutes of shooting; and after most of the cartel members were face-down and dead in the hangar’s dust; and after Damen had radioed Comms in for extraction—

—someone shoots, and the bullet finds Auguste.

Auguste hears the shot fire from behind him, blinks, and feels in the next moment a pain in his abdomen so white that it forces him to his knees. He drops his gun to the floor, gasping for air.

As though in slow motion, he sees Damen react. Damen pivots around as though on a string and fires  _one, two, three_ furious shots in the direction of whoever hit him from behind. With his ears still ringing from the gunfire, Auguste hears the dying breaths of a man hitting the ground.

Then, Damen comes to Auguste’s side. He hoists him up and takes him to cover, settling him down behind a large sheet of scrap metal. It’s not much of a shield, but the hangar is mostly empty space. They don’t have better options. Damen kneels next to him, props him up, takes off his own jacket and places it behind Auguste’s back for support. It’s reckless, exposing his arms like that, and Damen has a lot of goddamn  _arm_ , but Auguste knows better than to argue.

He also knows that if anyone can keep him alive, it’s Damen. In the first moment, Damen applies pressure to his wound and forges a makeshift bandage for him. In the next, he’s radioing in the shots to Comms. In the next, he checks Auguste’s pulse, tests his alertness, checks for nausea, and repeats everything back to central control.

Damen says:  _It’s bad. The bullet made a clean exit through the vest. He’s losing blood._  Damen says:  _hurry_. He promises to do several terrible things to a lot of good people if Auguste dies waiting for extraction.

It doesn’t feel real, somehow. Auguste has one hand over the wound, his fingers slick with his own blood, and he can feel his temperature spike. But still—it doesn’t feel  _real_.

They’re in the middle of the Nevada desert.  The hangar is cavernous and brimming with old planes, their frames and spare parts arranged in a loose ring around the centre of the space. In its very centre are sixteen tables, stacked so high with cocaine that the scoop will be news for  _weeks_. It’s the biggest bust the Bureau’s made in a long time: a medal-awarding, promotion-getting, lifetime-anecdote kind of bust.

The hangar’s filthy, and the sunshine filtering through the ashen windows is grim. Auguste doesn’t want to die here, but he thinks he might.

He says it out loud for the first time. “I think I’m going to die.”

Damen’s hands, which are occupied rolling out another length of bandage, freeze in the middle of the act. His fury is sudden, and molten.

“No speaking.” He says, dangerously quiet. “And I won’t let you die.”

“That’s not how it works.” Auguste says. And then—finally—he has a thought that makes it real, that takes his fear and breathes life into it. He says: “Listen. Tell Laurent I’m proud of him.”

“Extraction arrives in two.” Damen says. A crackle of static comes through and Damen presses a hand to his ear, focusing intently on whatever Comms is telling him. He looks back up at Auguste, still raging quietly. “And I’m not telling Laurent anything. You can survive and tell him yourself.”

The thing is: Auguste already has. The last thing he does before he goes dark for each mission is to call his brother and say  _goodbye_ , and  _I love you_ , and I _’m proud of you_.

Laurent hates it. He hates every single ceremonious phone call, every single recitation of Auguste’s care—not because of what’s said, but just in case it  _is_  the last time. He weathers it anyway, for Auguste’s sake.

“If I don’t,” Auguste says, quietly, and stops. He shifts on the ground and the pain comes at him like a knifepoint. He winces through it. “I need you to take care of him for me.”

Damen doesn’t respond. Auguste watches as something like conflict plays out across his features. He looks down at the ground for a few moments, and exhales severely.

Or maybe Auguste is just imagining it. Maybe he’s just lost that much blood.

Damen doesn’t speak for a long while, vacillating towards and away from resolve. Eventually, he makes up his mind, expression setting in a loaded frown.

“God—shit. “ He says. “ _Shit_. Okay.”

“—Damen?”

“Listen—I’m going to tell you something.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now. And he’s going to kill me for doing it, because you’re not supposed to know yet.” He says roughly, more to himself than anything. “Laurent and I are—we’re together.”

Auguste blanks, and for once that afternoon, the whiteness has nothing to do with a bullet.

“You’re— _together_.”

“Together.” Damen confirms, grimly. “I’m banging your brother. I’m going to ask him to marry me this summer, and you need to be alive to walk him down the aisle.”

Before Auguste can respond—before Damen’s words have even sunk in, really—another round of artillery flies over them. Auguste feels the bullets shower into the metal behind him, feels them reverberate against his back, feels every one as though it had lodged directly in his spine.

Damen moves, fury over sense. He stands up—exposed, and entirely without cover, and tactically  _ruinous_ —and unleashes return fire. He fires four shots, and Auguste hears four cries of pain, and then, the surgical drop of four dead bodies.

Damen crouches down again and reloads his gun, breathing heavily. His brow is darkened with sweat, hair coming loose out of the tight bun in which he keeps it. Damen’s bloody-minded intensity in the field strikes a sharp chord against the easy charm he wears everywhere else. Auguste wonders which side of him had caught Laurent’s eye.

Or perhaps, he thinks gamely, it was both. Along with their packaging.

“You’re — you mean —“

“I  _do_  mean.” Damen confirms grimly. “And if you die, he kills me, and then he’ll have no-one.”

Auguste searches himself, and finds a reservoir of energy that he probably can’t afford to spend.

“And you tell me all this  _now_?”

“He’s my  _boss_. And  _your_  boss.” Damen says, grimacing as he clicks his weapon back into place. “It’s not exactly professional.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I’m asking for your blessing, Aug.“

“There’s a  _bullet_ ,” Auguste exclaims, “in my  _side_.”

“The bullet made a clean exit.” Damen says, and then, almost more to himself: “He and I had a plan for telling you, you know. We talked about it. We had it all worked out. We were going to do it at my house, over brunch, and he was going to do all the talking.”

From a distance, they hear the sound of a helicopter coming into range. Both of them know better than to exhale. Until they sight the damn thing, it could well be coming for the other side.

But it’s been a long day. Auguste rests his head against the rusted metal. He’s tired, and his body’s hit the ground at the bottom of the cliff. He makes the mistake of closing his eyes, and once he does, he feels the rest of his muscles irresistibly give way, easing up and falling, one after the other like dominoes.

“You should have let him tell me,” Auguste says, listlessly. “He talks better than you do.”

“He does everything better than me. Why do you think I want him?”

Auguste thinks to himself,  _good answer_. Using the last dregs of his energy, he manages a smile.

“You can have my blessing,” he says, “if I can tell Laurent you said that.”


	24. Equal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Priesthood AU, Part 2. Part 1 can be found in Chapter 11, "Unity".
> 
> As before: Damen is the hot priest; Laurent is the hot unsuspecting congregant. Sacraments are misused.

Father Joseph asks Damen to cover the early confession shift—the one between 10.30 and 11 on Thursday morning. Father Joseph swears that it’s a one-off. He says that Mrs Elsie Smith is celebrating her 95th birthday at the rest home, and that she’s invited him to the birthday party. Alternatively, says Father Joseph, Damen is more than welcome to go to the party in his place.

Damen takes the extra shift.

He takes it, even though he’s never seen the point of a mid-week confession before lunchtime. No one ever comes, and if they do, their sins are rarely interesting. People who attend slots like Thursday morning come between errands, their mind on the last thing they’ve come from or the next thing they’re about to do. He hears them, blesses them, and sends them on their way with five to ten Our Fathers, and a Hail Mary if they’ve been extra bad.

He figures it’ll be quiet, so he takes a prayer book into the confessional with him. He might as well work on his own mortal soul.

Five minutes before he’s due to finish, he hears the telling creak of the church door. A set of deliberate footsteps come down the aisle. Damen’s spent so much time in this building that he can normally guess who’s coming, just by the sound of their steps on the redwood floor, but he can’t quite place this one.

The door to the other half of the confessional opens, and someone steps inside. Sits down. Most congregants usually launch into a rehearsed script of their sins. This congregant pauses and waits.

For what, exactly, Damen’s not sure. He’s tempted to look through the grille to see who it is, but doesn’t.

Eventually, a measured voice speaks into the quiet. It says, “Bless me father, for I have sinned. It’s been exactly a week since my last confession.”

Damen’s stomach lunges into free-fall when he realizes: it’s  _Laurent_.

His first response is a wild, inappropriate thrill at the prospect of taking  _Laurent_ , of all people, for confession.

God forgive him. He says, “Hello, Laurent.”

Laurent responds, “Oh.” And he’s not quick enough to keep the stagger out of his voice.

“You were expecting Father Joseph.”

“I—yes.”

“He’s at the rest home. At Elise’s birthday party. I took the shift.” Damen says. And then, even though it’s obvious, he adds. “You can still confess to me.”

He can’t see anything through the grille, but he hears a single disbelieving breath.

“To you.” Laurent says.

“I’m a good listener. Try me.”

And he knows as he says it— _knows_ —that he’s asking for himself.

Damen’s spent so much time on his knees, head bowed before the altar, praying about his feelings for Laurent. He prays for clarity over them, to be released from them, but now Laurent’s sitting on the other side of the confessional, and Damen has a semi-ordained right to ask about his deepest and darkest corners.

Damen wonders whether God’s testing him, or laughing at him.

Laurent sighs deeply.

“Alright. Um—well. Alright.” He says. “I was—unkind to someone at work today. I lost my patience with my brother last week. And sometimes, I take an extra half hour for lunch.”

And then he stops. In the silence that follows, Damen has the distinct impression that he is being monitored for a reaction.

Laurent’s given him the stuff of textbooks—a bouquet of venial sins. The kind Damen hears day in, day out, in the same monotones, by people without imagination. And what they tell him is probably all true, but that’s not the same thing as the  _truth_.

And at the very least, he suspects that Laurent’s keeping more interesting thoughts to himself.

He asks, “Does Father Joseph let you get away with that?”

“With what?”

“You only need to do this once or twice before you can sort the honest confessions from the junk. And that was junk,” he says. “And forgive me for saying so—but it wasn’t even particularly  _good_  junk.”

He hears Laurent take an unsteady breath through the grille, and then, miraculously: a quiet laugh. It’s a brief sound.

“I didn’t realize that confession was graded.” Laurent says, a familiar dryness seeping into his tone.

Damen smiles into the darkness. “It isn’t,” he says. “But if a heart’s not in it, I think it’s my duty to say so.”

Laurent seems to settle more easily into the opposite side of the booth. At the very least, the obvious tension sparking from the other end of the grille, from when he first arrived, has abated.

Damen likes this part of the job best. Not the ritual, nor the routine, nor the more arcane elements of theology, but this—encountering a wall and then finding a way through it, and the unfiltered connection that follows. It almost makes it worth his doubts about the job.

Laurent says, quietly, “It’s not in my nature, to speak openly about certain things.”

“I’ve heard every sin you can imagine a dozen times, and committed most of them myself,” says Damen. “But it’s natural to resist vulnerability. I get it.”

“How easy for you to say. One party bares their soul, and the confessor gets to listen. Nothing about the exchange is even.”

“It’s not meant to be transactional.” Damen says. “Faith isn’t a ledger you balance.”

“It would make more sense, if it was. It would make it easier to speak.”

“Then why come, if you don’t like it?”

“The same reasons anyone else comes to confession. Habit and guilt.”

Go figure, Damen thinks, that Laurent brings an argument about God to his own house. But this is the most he’s enjoyed taking rites in a long time.

“I have an idea.” He says.

“Well done. But it’s hardly an appropriate time.”

“Since you like reciprocity so much,” Damen says, ignoring him, “I’ll tell you something—anything you want to know. Afterwards, in return, you give me a confession worth something. Deal?”

“Does Father Joseph know you tamper with the sacraments?”

“I won’t tell him, if you won’t.” Damen says. “Do we have a deal, Vere?”

Laurent contemplates the offer for a moment. “Fine. Deal.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Something vulnerable.”

He knows what he’ll say, as soon as Laurent asks.

He takes a moment anyway, right before he speaks. It’ll be the first time he says the thought aloud, outside of his prayers. Damen knows that to speak it will bring it closer to a choice he can make, and make flesh of its intention. It should be a terrifying thought, but in the face of it, Damen finds himself strangely calm.

What bewilders him is that he’s telling  _Laurent_. Laurent, who he had only recently come to know. Laurent, who had arguably triggered this chain of thoughts in the first place.

He says, “I’m thinking of leaving the priesthood,” and hears a sharp intake of breath through the grille.

Damen finds himself waiting a while for a response. Strange, he thinks, how he feels more nervous about what Laurent will say than the thought of actually leaving. A useless part of him wonders whether Laurent will see right through him and his motivations.

When Laurent eventually responds, all he says is, “Well. That’s certainly—”, and then he stops again.

“Drastic?”

“I was going to say brave, but that too.” He says. “How long have you had doubts?”

“A while.” Damen says. “Six months.”

Six months since Laurent walked into Our Lady of the Assumption and asked for a blessing from his hand. Six months since the Vere brothers became regulars at Sunday mass, and invited him over for dinner on Tuesday, and had such a good time that they extended the Tuesday night invitation indefinitely.

Six months since Laurent and his quiet, wicked intelligence had arrived at the village and dismantled the quiet order of Damen’s life, brick-by-brick, perhaps without even knowing what he had done.

When he leaves the priesthood – and Damen realizes with a startle that he’s no longer thinking in  _ifs_  – he doesn’t know whether he’ll tell Laurent how he feels. At some level, this has nothing to do with Laurent. It’s bigger than him. Laurent only catalyzed the realization that maybe, Damen wants something else out of life.

He’ll need to pray on that, too.

“If it’s been six months,” Laurent says carefully, “that’s more conviction than doubt. What did Father Joseph say?”

“I’ll let you know after I tell him.”

“ _Damen_.”

“I know.” He says. “Give me a break. You’re the first person I’ve actually told,”

And he thinks that maybe it’s this revelation—not the other one—that offers his vulnerability to Laurent.

Sure, they’re friendly enough. They see each other at mass, and speak outside of it, and the village has a single supermarket and pub where they run into each other between days. Besides which, the median age in the village is so old that two young people in the same room will always find themselves in the same corner.

And they’ve had serious conversations before, too. There’s always a certain point on Tuesday night dinners, after dessert and before the coffee, when Auguste brings out the port and the conversation turns heavy. Sometimes Damen stays with the brothers till midnight, or one, or two. More than once, he’s overindulged and been forced to sleep it off in their spare room. They’ve talked deeply before.

But there’s talking, and then there’s  _this_.

After a long pause, Laurent says, “Thank you. For trusting me, I mean.”

“You’re welcome.” Damen says. “Your turn, now.”

And, like clockwork, a shrill and mechanical beeping fills the silence between them.

It comes from Laurent’s phone. He pulls it out to stop it, and a dusky blue light comes through from the other side of the grille.

Damen normally makes a point of not looking through the grille, but hazards a quick look now. The precise lines of Laurent’s face are illuminated in the glow of his phone. A few strands of his hair have fallen from behind his ear, and Damen looks away before he can think of wanting to tuck them back.

He leans back in his seat and closes his eyes. 

“That better not have been an alarm, Laurent, ” he warns.

“It wasn’t.” Laurent says, tapping his phone shut. The confessional goes dark again. “It was a message from work. I’ve been summoned back.”

“Are you going to tell them you’re in the middle of something?”

A lengthy pause follows. The longer it goes on, the more obvious the eventual answer.

“No,” Laurent says, although his is tone somewhere between an apology and a smile. “Listen, can I take a rain check?”

Damen fights back the urge to sigh, and the urge to say  _no_ , and the urge to tell him,  _stay_. He even has the grace to look for a silver lining, and finds it, because one thing has become abundantly clear in the course of this conversation. it’s this:

God is  _definitely_  laughing at him.


	25. Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU. PWP. Smut for the sake of it.

When Damen arrived home from work, Laurent accosted him in their bedroom. He only managed to shed his blazer before Laurent reached for his tie and wrapped it deftly around one hand, using it to pull him in. They kissed, and Laurent’s nimble fingers undid the Windsor knot that he had tied for Damen that same morning. He discarded the tie to the ground

Damen pulled Laurent’s hips to his own and said, roughly,  _That’s my best silk tie_. Laurent unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt for him and said,  _Fuck your best silk tie_. He pushed back the collar of Damen’s shirt, and applied his lush mouth to the newly exposed skin. The heat of him, the wet flicker of his lips and tongue against the hollow of Damen’s throat, snapped Damen’s control.

He crowded Laurent back against the bed and pushed him on it, following with the full force of his weight to pin him down. Then he began laying seige, divesting Laurent of his sweater and his trousers, throwing them to the floor, his hands sliding hungrily over every expanse of skin.

Laurent tried to reach for Damen’s shirt buttons, and for the zipper of his trousers, but found his hands batted away at each attempt. Damen kissed him silly, till Laurent half-laughed, half-groaned impatiently against his lips. He ordered Damen to  _start taking this seriously_ , damn it.

Damen said,  _Beg me_. Laurent answered, with a calculated defiance,  _Make me_.

He pulled away from Laurent just long enough to take a look at him, naked in all his brazenness. Damen felt a sudden, wild urge to dismantle it, and him along with it .

Damen retrieved his tie from the floor and when he returned to kiss him, Laurent’s hands instinctively reached for his face. Damen caught them and pinned them to the sheets above his head with more force than he should have. Laurent didn’t seem to mind at all: his pulse spiked under Damen’s grip.

With one end of the tie, Damen bound his wrists together, and with the other, he bound him to the headboard. Laurent watched him work, pupils wide, lips parted with the satisfaction of a man whose exact plan was coming to fruition.

After restraining Laurent, Damen slowed down every thread of his attention. He abandoned Laurent’s lips and anything below his navel, and focused his attention elsewhere: the dip of skin below his ear, the rise of his collarbone, brushed a thumb against his nipple. The press of Damen’s palm against Laurent’s flank became a light sweep of fingertips, and his kisses became langorous.

He knew Laurent liked it best like this, when Damen slowly coaxed him away from his control. Damen liked it too, taking his time and paying him a night’s worth of attention, watching as that mouth lost the ability to form sound around anything coherent.

But Laurent didn’t beg, even though his body gave him away.

His cock was thick and heavy, and he was leaking, and the rhythm of his breathing had long since faltered. A delicious, rosy flush spread from his cheeks down to his chest, emblazoning his skin with the depth of his arousal, and his mounting impatience saw him test his restraints. His wrists pulled up until they met the limits of the firm knot that Damen had tied around them.

At every touch, his body rose helplessly off the sheets, muscles pulled in a taut line that stretched from the headboard to the foot of the bed. His hips rolled uselessly into the empty air above him, blindly searching for relief. He was a vision.

And the strain in Damen’s trousers was unbearable. He felt full and heavy and it took all of his energy to refrain from giving in first, from wrapping a palm around Laurent and giving him something firm to thrust into.

And  _still_ , Laurent didn’t beg.

He began pressing a straight line of kisses down Laurent’s body, beginning at his mouth and lingering at the base of his throat. Down, along the the line of his sternum, detouring just long enough to take each sensitive nipple into his mouth and slide it against his tongue. Laurent jerked so violently after the first stripe that Damen had to check to make sure he hadn’t come.

And he hadn’t, but his body was a bundle of tense and hungry muscle, rising off the sheet in whichever direction Damen’s warmth came to it. His wrists would bruise something fierce at this rate, and the thought of him hiding red and purple under his shirt-cuffs was savagely gratifying. Damen’s lips continued their trail down, dragging along the centre of Laurent’s chest, over his belly.

When they passed below Laurent’s navel, he was close enough that Laurent’s cock grazed against his cheek. The contact jolted them both: Laurent’s hips rocked up again, and Damen felt himself pulse in his trousers.

But then—finally—the right sound came from between Laurent’s swollen lips. It was barely audible amongst his laboured breathing, but it sounded like a word.

Damen said,  _Again. Louder._

Laurent’s eyes had been pressed shut since the knot had tightened against his wrist. Now, they parted for Damen, gaze hooded with a mix of arousal and violence that was native only to him

He said,  _please_ , and it was a soft and staggered sound. And then, having said it once, it spilled from him over and over.  _please. please. please._


	26. War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Several years post-canon; Laurent unearths a plot; Damen is so Done he’d make Nikandros proud; flirting husbands.
> 
> [The prompt sounds dark, but the fic isn’t. Promise]

It had been a lengthy day of diplomatic engagements, and the reception for the new ambassador from Asmea had lasted well into the night. Ambassador Sabinus was the youngest nephew of the Asmean King, a fiercely bright young man of no more than twenty-three. His retinue was small in number, but the five of them roused enough mirth, and downed enough wine, to equal the entire Artesian court.

Damen felt his energy falter around midnight. Although the revelry continued unabated around him, he struggled to keep his eyes awake as Councillor Itmar schooled him on the finer points of grain taxation. By two in the morning, Damen formally drew an end to proceedings, and weathered all of Laurent’s jests about old age. Laurent, for his part, had kept Sabinus company for most of the night.

Damen couldn’t have cared less about his lost youth. Shedding his chiton and climbing between the fresh sheets felt like sinking into a warm cloud. He turned onto his stomach, buried his face in the lavendar scent of the pillow, and stretched every muscle in his body as far as it would go. It felt delicious. He opened one bleary eye to look for Laurent.

Laurent was on the other side of the room, and hovered near his desk, sifting through a stack of papers in his long sleepshirt. It hung mid-thigh, and he had left the front unlaced. It opened wide around his neck and sat on him asymmetrically, the left side of it almost falling off his shoulder. Damen felt a useless stir at the sight of him, but it was far too late to do anything about it.

Without looking up from his papers, Laurent said, “Ambassador Sabinus is very handsome, don’t you think?”

He spoke with a practiced casualness that he reserved only for particular conversations. Damen had heard it enough times by now to recognize the gravity belying its seemingly indifferent tone. He lifted his head off the pillow, to properly examine him.

Damen was also just alert enough to recognize the trap masquerading as Laurent’s innocent question. The new ambassador had golden hair and eyes the colour of the ocean on a bright day. He wore his hair long, and it tumbled artfully down the front of his chiton, curling where it sat at his hips.

In short, he resembled exactly one another person in the court. The similarity had not been lost on anyone in the expansive room—and clearly, least of all on the person to whom the resemblance was borne.

But it was too close to morning to play lengthy games, so Damen asked him directly: “What do you mean?”

“At tomorrow’s tourney, during the wrestling, Sabinus will be announcing his participation. It will seem spontaneous, and I imagine the crowd will be dazzled, which is precisely what he hopes to achieve. Then he will challenge you to a match.”

It was a detailed prediction, and Damen resigned himself to a night spent unpacking it. He pushed the covers off himself with some difficulty, and sat up in bed. He said, “That’s a detailed guess, even by your standards,” and had a strong suspicion of what Laurent would say in response.

“It wasn’t a guess, Damen. I’ve intercepted his correspondence.”

“Of course you have.”

Laurent left his papers and unlocked a compartment to the left of the desk. He knelt, and when he rose again, he held in his hand a walnut box of ornate decoration. Damen watched him bring it to the bed and lay it on the sheets, and press a finger to something at the back of the box that he could not see.

A hidden compartment slid out, lined in crushed green velvet. It revealed a small stack of letters held together by a thin leather strap. The parchment was of a deeper hue and coarser texture than anything produced in Akielos or Vere, or indeed in Artes. He counted five letters in all, and the blue wax seal on each of them was visibly broken.

They had been married for six years now, and together for longer, and Damen had slept in this chamber for half that time. He had never seen that box before. He studied it carefully before looking back up at Laurent.

“How many other things in this room have hidden compartments?” He asked lightly.

“If I told you,” said Laurent, eyes dancing, “They wouldn’t be hidden compartments anymore.”

He took the letter at the top of the pile and offered it to Damen, who accepted it and stared down at the broken royal seal of the King of Asmea. The letter was unmistakably an original copy.

Damen said, “If you’re found in possession of this, you’ll start a war.”

“No one will know that it’s missing. Our royal brother in Asmea writes with an easily-imitated script, and his seal is simple to duplicate as well.” Laurent said, the corner of his mouth quirking. Damen had always found it endearing, how much he enjoyed his own intelligence. “I have the copies delivered, and the originals brought to me. You should read the one in your hand. Its contents might amuse you.”

Damen looked down and scanned the first few lines. And then he stopped, and blinked, and re-read from the beginning, just to confirm what he had seen. He finished the first page, and then skim-read the rest.

Flatly, he said, “This is all about  _me_.”

Him, and only him. The letter was a detailed portrait of his habits and his preferences, and every mundanity of his day, laid out in detail that could only have come with the benefit of first-hand accounts. It listed everything from the names of the councils that he chaired, to the names of his most trusted advisors, to the frivolous matters of his preferred sports and breakfast preferences, and everything in between. At the very end of the letter, and of greatest concern to Damen, was a respectable outline of his typical daily routine.

None of the information itself was private, or indeed, particularly revealing. It was knowledge that was inherent to spending time at the Artesian court. But seeing it all collected together, meticulously organized, with all the care of a scholar towards a subject— _that_ , more than anything, begged the question of its purpose.

“Does Sabinus mean to assassinate me?” Said Damen.

“No. I believe he means to seduce you.”

Damen went still. Laurent had said it with all the involvement of a man describing the weather.

In the moments that followed, Damen examined his own reaction. He found himself unable to decide whether assassination would have been a more merciful risk.

He felt his exhaustion, then, in the marrow of his bones. There was too much wine in his blood for this. He had lost count of how many turns the conversation had taken, and resigned himself to being led in whichever direction Laurent would take it.

“You can’t know for certain that he means to seduce me,” he said, although it came out as more of a hope than a conviction.

“I was rather hoping you’d say that. As a matter of fact, I can.”

This time, Laurent pulled up the whole pile of letters into his hand. He began flicking through them and settled on the third letter from the bottom, pulling it out with dramatic relish. He held it up in the air, rigid between two fingers.

It seemed that Laurent was rather enjoying himself.

“A number of your former lovers have been found, and questioned. With the information they’ve provided, our royal brother in Asmea has developed something of a library of your tastes, all ready for his nephew.” Laurent said, waving the piece of paper in the air. He arched a brow and added, “I must say—it’s most comprehensive. I learned a thing or two myself.”

Damen felt the colour as it spread across his chest, and up to his neck, and warmth as it washed over his cheeks. He reached out for the letter but Laurent pulled it away from him, and promptly filed it back amongst its brethren.

When he looked back up at Damen, his eyes were bright. “Oh, I don’t think you would have liked reading that one.”

“I’m almost beginning to hope for an assassination.” Said Damen. “What purpose can there be in seducing me?”

“I’m close to answering that. For now, I suspect that the ambassador is instructed to sow discord in the royal bed.”

”Yes, but to what  _end_?”

Laurent paused and said, “I hear they’re building warships in Asmea.”

He fell quiet, then, but remained firm under Damen’s inquiring gaze.

Damen watched him carefully, and with a mounting sense of wonder. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, after all these years, that Laurent had unearthed a plot so shortly after it had been sown. The instincts honed in the youth had clearly not rusted in the man.

Damen said, “Are they foolish enough, to think they can come between us?”

“I can see a weak logic in the thought that Artes will only survive if we’re happy together.’ Said Laurent. And then—quietly, possessively: “But they don’t know how we are.”

He followed his declaration with a silence, and Damen did not interrupt it.

Laurent’s comfort with bare-faced declarations had improved, even though he still treated such private truths like diamonds, as things to be protected, and kept hidden from public view. When he did occasionally bring them out into the open air, the very act took something out of him.

Laurent busied himself with tidying the bundle of letters, and tying the thin leather strap around them. Damen watched the careful, delicate motions of his hands.

“Shall I decline his offer of a match tomorrow?”

“No. You’re going to accept it.” Said Laurent. He looked up, his guard newly eased by the talk of more practical matters. “I want you to fight him, naked in the Akielon style. I want you both to writhe against each other for as long as you can before besting him, and when you eventually help him off the floor, I want you to praise his valiant effort.”

“And where will you be?”

“Watching from my throne,” he said, “poorly concealing my displeasure.”

Damen said, suddenly pleased “You’re going to pretend to be jealous over me, in public?”

“I assure you, I won’t be pretending.”

Damen knew better than to give in to a smile, but he found his chest warming with pleasure at the thought of Laurent parading any degree of envy before the court. His affection was only ever practiced in private, his public displays limited to a brief brush of hands or a quiet word in the ear.

Damen also knew that he should be more concerned by the revelations about Asmea. He had lived long enough to know that the worst kind of enemies were those who played at being friends. But the truth was this: he couldn’t help where his attention fell.

He said, “You intend for him to think that his plan is working.”

“Only briefly. Just long enough to draw out the other players in his game.” Laurent answered. He paused and then added, “I must admit – I thought news of a looming war might disturb you more than it has.”

“They don’t have you on their side. I do. ” Said Damen. He allowed a bold streak of affection to colour his voice. “Let the King of Asmea try what he will. Sabinus can do his worst.”

Laurent placed the box on his bedside table, and failed to bite back his smirk.

“If I recall correctly from that letter,” he said, “I suspect you might enjoy what ‘their worst’ entails.”

Damen’s mind turned to it, and he found himself scowling—at the letter, and its forged twin, and all the documents that must exist in Asmea which led to their existence. His trust had been breached by lovers, and Damen resisted the urge to dwell on who might have spoken. It was the most personal and intimate of attacks.

“If you love me, you’ll burn that letter and every single one of its copies.”

“Oh, I will.” Laurent said, and his eyes danced so brightly that Damen knew a condition was coming. “I’ll destroy everything to do with it— _after_  we’ve worked through its contents.”


	27. I miss you. I miss our conversations.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 3 of the Modern AU where Laurent is an overworked junior doctor, and Damen is the patron saint of doting husbands. As shamelessly domestic and fluffy as the other parts.
> 
> Part 1 - from Chapter 6, Power - is [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14861213/chapters/34520714).  
> Part 2 - from Chapter 19, Rise - is [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14861213/chapters/34845854).

Night shifts were always the worst. They lasted for seven days, from Friday night to Thursday night. During those weeks, Damen and Laurent would somehow both live in the same house and run into each other once or twice. Maybe. If they were lucky.

Laurent loved his job. Obviously, he also  _hated_  it, in the way that anyone who works harder than they’re paid for hates their job, but he never once doubted that he was meant for medicine. Night shifts, on the other hand, made him wonder whether it was worth the toll on his time, and his sleep cycle, and his relationship.

But he and Damen called each other every day, and if they couldn’t, they left each other voice messages (at Damen’s insistence—“I’d rather hear your voice”). They knew where the other was, and had a rough idea of what he was doing, and had done the best they could under the staggering pressure of Laurent’s shiftwork.

And yet—

—when Laurent comes home every morning after a night shift, he nurses a quiet fear that is only allayed when he sees Damen’s mug still in the sink, his toothbrush still next to the basin, his clothes still occupying three quarters of their closet.

Only after Laurent has confirmed these things can he shower, and draw the curtains, and climb into Damen’s side of the bed. He sleeps on Damen’s pillow because it still carries the scent of him. He’ll wake up before Damen gets home and tidy the bed, and won’t tell him where he’s slept.

* * *

On Friday, after the last evening of his night shift, Laurent doesn’t finish till midday. His head pounds with the kind of violence that only ever accompanies 16 straight hours at work. He gets into his car and tries to put the key into the ignition seven or eight times before he thinks to himself,  _maybe I shouldn’t drive today_.

He falls asleep in the taxi home, almost walks out of it without paying, and makes it inside as far as the lounge before collapsing on the couch. By this point, it’s one in the afternoon. He doesn’t even bother reaching for a blanket, and falls asleep halfway before his body lands on the cushions.

When Laurent’s stomach wakes him up almost eight hours later, he realizes that he’s no longer on the couch, but in bed. His memory draws a blank as to how he got there.

He stands up and stretches, feels every bone in his back and shoulders click pleasingly into place. It feels kind of good.  _He_  feels kind of good. His head isn’t quite clear of the fog, but its ache is as dull and low as it’s been in a week.

But goddamn—he looks like  _hell_. The bathroom mirror is unforgiving in its assessment, offering him lank hair and sallow skin and hollows under his eyes, without a shred of flattery. He quickly gets into the shower to escape his reflection, more than anything else. When he’s clean, and warm, and when his skin is pink from the heat of the water, he throws on one of Damen’s t-shirt ovee boxers and goes to rejoin the living.

Damen’s in the kitchen, the knife in his hand flying over a bouquet of parsley. He smiles at Laurent, swiping bits of green off the side of the blade and onto the chopping board. Laurent’s heart twists at the sight of him, and the loose bun of his hair, and his natty red flannel pyjamas that wouldn’t serve for rags.

“How long has it been?” Damen says, instead of hello, and the sound of his voice is milk and honey.

“Three whole days.” Laurent replies, his voice still thick with sleep. “Plus four hours. And a half.”

“So—we have a new record.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I just missed you. The house felt like a ghost.”

Instead of responding, Laurent goes behind him and presses his chest against Damen’s back, his cheek into the corner where shoulder curves into neck. He snakes his hands into Damen’s pockets and leans all his weight against Damen’s frame. It probably isn’t helpful for handling a knife, but goddamn it, the food can wait.

Damen picks up a slice of cucumber and offers it to Laurent over his shoulder, who bites it out of his hand. It’s the first thing Laurent’s eaten since an improvised breakfast of leftover cake from the staffroom, and half a slice of bread. It’s meager sustenance, and his stomach lets out an almighty rumble in anticipation of being fed. At the sound, he mashes his face deeper into Damen’s shirt.

Damen gives a singular laugh, his shoulders rising against Laurent’s weight. He says, “ _Christ_.”

“Shut up, and keep feeding me.”

“You’re such a bitch when you’re hungry.” Damen grins. “I always forget.”

“How did you get me to bed, anyway?” Laurent says, though most of the words are lost in Damen’s collar.

“Hauled you there over my shoulder.”

“Really?” He asks, and it isn’t a rhetorical question. Damen has the brute strength to pull it off, and Laurent likes the mental image enough to file it away.

’No. I spent ten minutes convincing you up, and another ten trying to walk you over to bed. You’re less pliant than you used to be.”

Laurent knees him gently between the legs. “Keep talking shit,” he threatens, “and I won’t be pliant with you for a week.”

Damen laughs. He opens his mouth to respond, but Laurent noses the sharp line of his jaw before it forms around any words. That shuts him up well enough, and pulls a happy sigh out of him instead. Laurent closes his eyes and empties his mind, allowing himself to feel nothing but the warmth of Damen’s body like an evening fire, and the scratch of his stubble, and the simple pleasure of being close to him after a week without.

He feels Damen tilt his head back, exposing his neck for more of Laurent’s ministration. Laurent obliges him. His lips seek out Damen’s pulse and suck on the skin hard enough to break blood beneath it. After he’s done, he lands a kiss over his handiwork.

“I missed you.” He says. “I missed our conversations.”


	28. Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-canon fic. Afterlife fic. And-no-one-was-sad-ever-again fic.
> 
> Part 2 of the Afterlife AU. Part 1 - from Chapter 16, "I Know Who You Are, Damianos" - is [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14861213/chapters/34764644).

Laurent doesn’t believe in life after death.

He says, it’s swill which keeps a man hopeful that perhaps, there is meaning in his misfortune. He says, one finite lifetime is exhausting enough. He says, it’s the currency of grievers with no strength over their hearts, and priests with no other leverage over their flock. He says, I hope one day to die, and to wake no more, and to never know suffering again. 

He dies, as all men must. When he does, Damen and Auguste wait for him in the long corridor with the white marble arches.

When the image of Laurent fragments and then comes into form before them, he looks young again. He looks like he did at his coronation, the same surety and grace wound around every straight line of his posture. His hair, which had stayed full and thick in his old age, has once more found its colour. Damen had forgotten how brightly it could shine, how it bared gold to the light in all of its infinite shades.

For the first time, Damen contemplates an eternity like this: all three of them, young and forever.

Laurent is on guard, silent and still, bewildered as they all are at first by the fact that he has died but somehow still  _is_. He touches the hem of his jacket, rubs a thumb over a button, raises a hand to his face and feels his skin. They watch the exact moment when he realizes that it’s there, younger and more supple than when he had last seen it. They watch as his eyes begin to measure his environment, scanning the arches around him as though for an explanation.

They watch as he finally looks forward, and notices them both, and stops.

He says, “No”, but it’s more to himself, testing the reality of what’s before him.

At the sound of his voice, Damen’s blood accelerates under his skin. Lauren outlived him by five years. Five years since they’d shared a bed or a word, and since he’d felt that warmth between them on which he’d glutted himself in life. Damen wants to go to him and envelop him, and feel the strength in his lithe frame again. He wants to hear him laugh.

But he doesn’t, because Auguste is at his side. Damen had enjoyed Laurent to himself for a whole lifetime, but Auguste’s enjoyment had been cut short. Damen would not step in his way again. He had waited long enough.

Laurent’s eyes are only on his brother anyway, and wide, but he doesn’t move. It seems that he can’t. He holds himself in place with all the effort of a man fighting back enough shock to keel him over. The loss in his eyes is unfiltered. He looks a younger, more painfully innocent rendition of himself.

Damen knows that look; the shuttering of hope and the raising of guards in it. Laurent wears it whenever he’s presented with something that he desperately wants, and doesn’t dare believe that he’ll have. He wore it at Ravenel, at Mellos, and at the first sight of Damen in Ios.

Damen turns to Auguste. He is a mirror of his brother’s bewilderment, as silent as Damen has ever seen him in the brief time they have known each other.

Damen says, “Go to him.”

Auguste steps forward, and Laurent’s eyes widen at his approach. Laurent looks like a skittish cat, his guard bristled with something close to fear. Auguste stops just short of him, perhaps to give him space, and Damen takes stock of the brothers side by side for the first time. They look right standing next to each other, different beauty cut from the same gem.

Damen knows that a lifetime is not written in stone until it is lived, and that there are infinite courses each one may take. Quietly, he grieves for every discarded route that might have seen Auguste and Laurent grow old in each other’s company.

Auguste says, “Hello, little one.”

A moment arrives. It hums quietly with all the possibilities of what might follow. Then, Laurent extends a cautious hand towards his brother. Damen’s chest aches when he notes the slight tremor in his fingers.

Laurent’s touch of his brother’s sleeve is exploratory, as though to confirm the solid feel of the fabric. Perhaps he expects an apparition, or for his hand to pass through an image, but it doesn’t.

“Impossible.” He breathes.

“I’m here,” says Auguste. “And so are you.”

Auguste reaches out for Laurent’s face, holds him by the jaw, keeps him in place there. The last time they had been together, Auguste’s body was cold and unmoving. Now, he allows Laurent to feel the warmth and the blood of him, and all the life that courses through his veins.

The thin string holding Laurent together snaps.

His control falls spectacularly, with all the speed and violence of a floor giving way underfoot. He allows himself to be folded into his brother’s arms, allows his face to be concealed in Auguste’s jacket. Laurent gives up his whole weight against Auguste, and Auguste bears it like he has never wanted anything more.

Damen notices, then, how heavy Laurent’s breathing seems to come. It takes him another moment to realize that Laurent is crying.


	29. Personal Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 3 of the Priesthood AU. As ever, Damen is the hot trainee priest; Laurent is the hot unsuspecting congregant; ~feelings~.
> 
> \- Part 1 - Unity - is [hither](http://caravanslost.tumblr.com/post/174495838765/11-unity).   
> \- Part 2 - Equal - is [thither](http://caravanslost.tumblr.com/post/174943930350/25-equal).

Tuesday night dinner with the Vere brothers is always at 7, sharp. Damen turns up late this week, at half past the hour, having been cornered by a troop of well-meaning women from the elderly prayer group after mass. With him is a nicer-than-usual bottle of red, by way of apology.

Laurent opens the door. He’s wearing his brother’s  _Kiss the Chef_  apron over his shirt, and he looks flustered. He says “Auguste’s been held back. I’m afraid it’s just me”, which Damen already knows, and has planned around. A timer sounds from somewhere in the kitchen, and Laurent blurts a hasty apology before he rushes off, leaving a bemused Damen to allow himself in.

A brief glance at the kitchen reveals that Auguste is the more natural cook of the two. Under Laurent’s reign, the kitchen is a riot of simmering pots, unwashed dishes and chopping boards. It’s warmer than anywhere else in the house, and Laurent flits from one corner to another, rinsing something here and chopping something there.

If pressed, Damen probably couldn’t explain why he enjoys the sight of Laurent so flustered. He thinks that it might have something to do with the way Laurent keeps smoothing a hand through his hair between tasks. In any case—and without being asked—Damen pushes up his sleeves and stands at the sink. He begins washing dishes through all of Laurent’s half-hearted protests about him being a guest.

All that effort, for a humble chicken and mushroom pasta. They eat it at the island in the middle of the kitchen, banked on the stools, Laurent punctuating every second mouthful with an apology for the rubbery meat, or the undercooked pasta, or the under-seasoned sauce. Damen has two helpings of the meal to ease him, and pours Laurent a second glass of wine.

It’s all very charming, and almost enough to distract Damen from why he’s really here, and what he’s here to say.

He waits until after dinner, after they’ve cleaned all the dishes away, until the kitchen has been restored to its former glory. Laurent brings out a trifle from the fridge – a sumptuous affair of raspberry and ginger truffle, store-bought – and pours them both a coffee. They talk about nothings for a while, and Damen wishes it could stay that way.

He waits until Laurent’s halfway through his second bowl of trifle, and until there’s a natural lull in the conversation. Then he clears his throat, and speaks.

With his heart racing, he says, “I need to talk to you about something.”

He says it so casually that Laurent doesn’t immediately look up from his spoon. It takes a few more moments of silence from Damen before the weight of the moment reveals itself to Laurent.

When he eventually looks up, and sees the way Damen’s looking at him, an imperceptible moment passes over his features. He quickly papers over it with indifference. Damen only picks it up because he’s spent so many homilies studying his face, watching for the minute footprints of his interest and distaste.

“Why?” Laurent asks.

“Because the Bishop asked me to.”

Whatever Laurent was expecting, it wasn’t that. “The Bishop knows who I am?”

“He does.”

“Am I in trouble?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Then how does he know I exist?”

Damen braces himself. This is going to be the hard part. 

He’s spent enough time in their kitchen to know his way around it. He knows that behind him is a hutch cabinet with enough spirits to blind a man, and he’s certainly asked for a double shot of bourbon with his coffee before. He should have thought to ask for one today, because if he speaks now, as he intends to do, then he changes everything.

The silence becomes heavier with every extra second that Damen takes to measure his words. He thinks, maybe he shouldn’t say anything. Maybe he can make something up, something mundane, and regress into the old comfort of familiar circusmtances—

—but nothing comes to him. He’s never been a good liar. All that he has is the truth, so he offers it.

“The Bishop knows about you,” Damen begins, speaking it down to his bowl of trifle, heart in his throat “because he takes confession for all the junior priests every Monday, and I talk about you.” Another pause, another exhale. “He’s been listening to me talk about you for a while.”

It’s maybe the hardest thing he’s ever had to say aloud. It is superseded immediately by the effort it takes to look up and meet Laurent’s gaze. He braces himself for recoil at worst, embarrassment at best.

He finds neither. What he finds instead is that Laurent’s expression is somewhere unguarded.

He says, “Damen,” and it comes out so softly that it’s barely louder than a breath.

Damen thinks to himself, at least the let-down will be gentle. At least Laurent will be kind about it. At least they might be able to pretend this never happened in front of Auguste, and the Tuesday night dinners—the highlight of his week, every week—might go on.

Laurent puts down his spoon. He sits up a little straighter in his seat. He wraps his hands around his mug. All these actions are of a mind gathering itself, and when it has, he finally asks, “What do you want me to say?”

“I need you to tell me that you don’t think of me in that way, and that it wouldn’t work.” Damen says, before adding, a little frivolously and with a shadow of a smile, “If you have any boyfriends hidden in the woodworks, now’s an ideal time to trot them out.”

Another lengthy pause follows, in which Laurent studies him so carefully that Damen wonders whether his heart might stop under the sheer anticipation of what he might say.

“Is that what you believe?”

“It’s what the Bishop thinks I need to hear from you.”

“If the Bishop presumes to know my mind,” Laurent says, his every word careful and deliberate, “then his Excellency flatters himself.”

And there are burning embers in his gaze.

There’s just enough wit left in Damen to sense a meaning, there. It’s probably obvious, dancing right in front of him dressed in neon lights and klaxons, but it’s too large for him to read from between the lines. Its too improbable. If it’s there, he needs to hear it.

“Do you mean—“ He says, and stops, because he can’t find the words to ask.

“I mean,” Laurent says quietly, “that I still owe you a confession. Would you like to hear it?”

Damen nods. Otherwise, he doesn’t move. He finds himself held in place by the unwavering line of Laurent’s gaze.

“I see how you look at me.” Laurent begins, his voice firm and easy around the truth. When Damen flushes, Laurent holds up a hand as though it could stop the spread of colour across his skin. “No, don’t—that’s not what I meant. What I meant is that I like it.”

The revelation rearranges the very air around them.

“I had no idea,” says Damen, voice firmer than he feels.

“Then you’re not very observant,” says Laurent. He leans forward onto the table, towards Damen. “I would never, ever deign to pull you away from your vocation, but you’re asking me to tell you that I don’t want you. I’m not going to sit here and lie to you when the truth is that I do.”

Damen’s mind muddles through a number of thoughts: that if he were to place a hand to the back of Laurent’s neck to bring him closer, Laurent would come willingly. That if he leans over and presses his lips to Laurent’s, they just might kiss him back. That if he took Laurent’s hand and led him down the corridor to his bedroom, they might—

He says, instead “I’ve prayed more Hail Marys about you in six months than most people do in a lifetime.”

“And praying didn’t help?” Laurent says, a corner of his mouth quirking with a smile.

“The harder I prayed about you, the more I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I started wondering whether that was the point.”

Laurent’s hands move to the edge of the tabletop, and rest there like a loaded spring, like there’s a further intention to their motion.

He asks, “May I?”, and Damen answers, “You may”, even though he has no idea where he’s being led.

Laurent’s hands move forward and find his, and cover them. Without thinking, Damen splays his fingers, and Laurent’s slot into the spaces between them, and close the gaps. All he can feel in that moment is their hands intertwined tightly, the pressure of grip in grip, and  _god_ , Damen thinks,  _how warmly he runs._

He knows that the path ahead of him will be difficult, littered with hard choices and harder conversations, with renouncing vows he had once intended to keep forever, with maybe a lifetime spent justifying the choice he’s going to make.  

But Laurent’s hands are in his, and for now, nothing else matters.


	30. Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU. Waking-up-in-Vegas AU. Saint Nikandros the Perpetually Done.

Laurent wakes up with a headache as sharp as a knifepoint. He feels as though a dagger is pressed to each side of his temple, and someone’s trying to make them meet in the middle of his skull.

Without opening his eyes, he can register just enough of his surroundings to know that it’s daylight. The TV’s on, and he can make out the idle pabulum of a morning show low in the background. Warm sunlight beats against his arm, and he can hear the the sound of a kettle boiling from somewhere in the hotel room.

He ventures an eye open—and regrets it immediately, groaning, shutting it right back up again. The day’s too bright, and it sears at the pain in his skull. He presses his face deeper into the pillow, waiting until its higher notes have subsided.

“Enough.” Says someone. “Both of you are going to wake up,  _now_.”

Laurent thinks,  _—Nik?_

Nik was due to arrive on the 10am flight. Laurent frowns into the pillow and tries to work backwards from that thought.  _If Nik arrived on time—and he’s here, then—it’s—close to midday?_

There is no reason for Nik to be in his and Damen’s room. It’s too early for Laurent to work out why he is.

“Give them a break.” Says another voice—Auguste, this time. His tone is a counterpoint to Nik’s, light and droll. ‘They’ve had a  _very_  big night.”

“And whose fault is that?” Nik says. Maybe Laurent’s still half-asleep, but something in the way he says it sounds— _accusatory_.

The bed shifts on the other side—which means that Damen is stirring. Damen emits a customary morning rumble and moves around before finding a more comfortable position. His body settles back onto the sheets, heavy and immovable. He falls right back asleep.

“It’s midday,” says Nik. “And both you clusterfucks are waking up  _right now_.”

And then, to draw a line beneath his point, he pulls the covers away.

“ _Nik_.” Says Auguste, with only half his heart in it.

The covers move away, down the bed, and take with them the delicious, enveloping warmth of their weight. Laurent hears the muffled sound of them landing on the carpet. He thinks to himself,  _Nik will bleed for this, as soon as I open my eyes._

Laurent shifts from his side onto his back, and feels a sharp pain in his leg. The corner of something solid pushes into his skin, and it takes him another moment before he realizes,  _my wallet_. It’s still in his pocket, which means—

And even though Laurent would literally rather do anything else, he blearily opens his eyes, and looks down the bed at his body. He’s still in last night’s clothes: black slacks, black t-shirt, and— _Jesus_ —even his blazer. At least his shoes are off.

He sits up. Even though he rises slowly, it’s not enough to quell the dizziness that accompanies being upright. With the heels of his palms, he tries to rub the sleep out of his eyes and the pain out of his skull. He does not succeed on either front.

He looks around the room and counts two bottles of wine—empty—that go some way to explaining everything. Nik is standing at the foot of the bed, arms folded, his expression thunderous. Auguste is on an armchair next to the television, but he’s smiling. He looks like he’s having the time of his life.

Laurent thinks, _at least one of us is, this morning._  From somewhere in the room, the electric kettle whistles.

He turns to the other side of the bed. Damen’s still in last night’s clothing as well, on his stomach, all wrinkled jeans and hands buried under his pillow. The blue cashmere sweater Laurent bought him on a whim—the unseasonably expensive one—is bunched over the lines of his hips.

And his shoes are still on. Which is disgusting.

Laurent turns back to Nik and says, as tartly as he can manage with his pounding head, “Can you do something useful? Make coffee?”

Before Nik has the time to react, Auguste is up and at the kitchenette, ever the diplomat. For a few moments, as Laurent and Nik stare each other down, the loudest sound in the room is the strike of teaspoons against mugs.

Laurent shoves Damen in the side, once, twice, with the heel of his palm.

“Damen. Wake up. Nik’s about to kill me.”

“What did you do now,” Damen grumbles.

“What did you  _both_ do,” says Nik. He turns on his heel to look at Auguste, briefly redirecting his ire. “And  _you_! You just—you  _let_  them do it.”

Auguste, dolloping heaped spoonfuls of sugar into each mug, smiles without a hint of remorse. “You say that like anyone could have stopped them.”

Laurent looks between them and asks, “Stop what?”

Which gathers all the tension in the room, pulls it into dense mass, and slams it up through the ceiling. He sees Nik and Auguste exchange A Look before turning back to him.

“You mean—you don’t remember?” Nik says, incredulous. He leans forward over the bed and shakes Damen’s leg with more violence than strictly necessary to get his attention. ”How about you, Casanova? Do you remember what you did?”

Damen grumbles and pushes himself deeper into his pillow. He won’t be any use to anyone for at least another hour. With a flicker of irritation, Laurent thinks,  _Nik should know this._

But he puts himself to better use, and tries to rifle through his mind for what happened last night.

What he finds are disjointed fragments of an evening. He remembers arriving in Vegas with Damen and Auguste last night. He remembers Nik calling to say he’d been held back at work, and then calling again to say he’d missed his flight. He remembers arriving at the hotel and drinking; five courses at  _Le Cirque_ and drinking; Auguste at the poker table, straight flush in hand, and drinking, and then—

—absolutely nothing else.

“Jog my memory.” He says.

“Look at your hand.” Nik replies.

So he does, and sees nothing of interest on the right one. But there’s a band on the left one.

_A gold band_ , and Laurent’s stomach goes into free-fall.

He says, “Damen.”

“Mmmmph.”

“ _Damen_.” He repeats, tone sharpening. “Get up and look at your hand.”

Damen stirs, slowly at first. He wakes like a boulder coming to life, and with as much grace. But then he pulls his hands out from under his pillow, and through bleary eyes sees gold on one of them.

And then he, too, rises like a fired gun.

“Oh.” He says, suddenly awake, suddenly alert. “Oh.”

Laurent turns to his brother “You knew?”

“Knew?” Nik says. “He was your joint best man.”

“And you didn’t think to stop us?” 

Something delighted flashes crosses Auguste’s features. “It was your idea, Laurent. We walked past a chapel, and you got down on one knee in the middle of the pavement. And  _you_ ,” he says, nodding to Damen, “said yes before Laurent’s knee hit the concrete.”

Laurent and Damen look from their hands to each other for the first time that morning, and a moment of uncertainty sits between them.

But then, Laurent thinks,  _there’s no need for it_.

With the edge of a tentative smile, he says, “In vino, veritas.”

For a moment, they’re only the only two people in the room. He sees affection spill into Damen’s smile with the irrepressible force of water from a broken dam. Laurent thinks for the first time,  _we’re married_ , and although his heart’s still hammering like it did a moment ago, every beat of it is a happy strike on a joyful drum.

“You beat me to it.” Damen says, more quietly, intended just for him. “I was going to propose on our anniversary.”

And Laurent’s wearing his smile on his sleeve by now. “We’ve saved on the wedding, at least.”

“Y _ou two_ ,” Nik exclaims, “got  _married_ , on my  _stag do_.”

“We’ll make it up to you,” says Damen.

The promise is made absent-mindedly, because he’s suddenly looking at Laurent in  _a way._ His eyes are like kindling, laden with unspent energy, and his morning hair is ruffled as though in invitation to Laurent’s fingers. Everything about him in that moment—from the way he leans back lightly on his hands, to the way the sheet is lightly fisted in them—seems an invitation.

An unspoken meaning passes through the air between them, from sealed lips to silent mouth: there are too many people in this room.

“The two of you will have to excuse us,” says Laurent. “It seems we have a marriage to consummate.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing these prompts has been an absolute pleasure. This is my first time writing for the Captive Prince fandom and I've been floored by how lovely you all are. Thank you so much for reading - and for prompting - and if you have any more, come find me and and my inbox on Tumblr ^_^

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos/Cookies/Comments are welcomed. Otherwise, come say hi and drop me a prompt on Tumblr - my username's the same ^_^


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